UST 



i)LD Testament 



a A F T s 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf .B.S.iJ 7 1 

A^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MUST THE OLD TESTAMENT GO? 



BY REV. W. F. CRAFTS. 



New Testament Helps. .20. 

Teachers' Edition of the Revised New Testament, with 

the above "Helps," marginal notes, etc. ^1.50. 
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:j^*i(: A fiy volume mailed postpaid on receipt of 
the price. 

JAMES H. EARLE, Boston, Mass. 



Must the Old Testament Go? 



OR, 



THE RELATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE OF TO-DAY. 



/ 
By rev. WILBUR F. CRAFTS, B. D., 

AUTHOR OF "thB RESCUE OF CHILD-SOUL," '^SUCCESSFUL MEN OF 
TO-DAY," ''heroes AND HOLIDAYS," ETC. 



BOSTON: 

JAMES H. EARLE, PUBLISHER, 

178 Washington Street. 

1883. 






Copyright, 1883, 
By W. F. Crafts. 



PREFACE. 



The main argument of this volume was orig- 
inally read as a paper before the Brooklyn 
Clerical Union,, whose distinguished members 
generally endorsed the positions taken. It was 
subsequently presented as a thesis to the Alpha 
Chapter of the Alumni of the Boston University, 
by whom its publication was requested. Numer- 
ous and important additions have been made to 
the original manuscript in connection with the 
most recent controversies about the Pentateuch. 

As most of the contributions to these Old 
Testament controversies are expressed in tech- 
nical terms, understood by a few only, there 
seems to be room for a statement of the case 
in the language of the people. 

Whatever prejudices may be destroyed, all 
reverent and reasonable investigations of the 



6 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

Bible are to be welcomed. As the controversy 
that culminated in the Nicene Creed practically 
settled the doctrine of Christ's deity; and as 
the Reformation crystalized the doctrine of jus- 
tification; so in our day, perhaps, the doctrine 
of inspiration is to have its crucial investiga- 
tion and more accurate statement, and then 
remain forever settled in the Church. 

W. F. C. 

Brooklyn, May, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Is any Scripture inspired which does not 

inspire me ? 9 

II. Is there any Scripture which does not 

inspire some minds ? 22 

III. How fared the Old Testament when tested 

by Christ's Reason ? 27 

IV. Did Christ's Moral Sense Reject the Old 

Testament Histories as Incredible } , . 36 

V. Did Ezra deceive Christ ? 45 

VI. Will the New Theories about the Old Tes- 
tament Bear the Tests of Logic ? . . 59 
VII. Did Christ abrogate Old Testament Laws ? 76 
VIII. What was the teaching of Christ in regard 
to Old Testament prophecies and im- 
precatory Psalms ? 82 

IX. Are God's tenderness and Man's immor- 
tality revealed in the Old Testament ? 92 






MUST THE OLD TESTAMENT GO ? 



I. 



Is Any Scripture Inspired which does not 
Inspire Me? 

The most subtle line of criticism directed 
against the present use of the Old Testament 
for moral and spiritual culture, and one found 
not on]j^ outside of the evangelical church, 
but also inside of it, is represented by the 
following quotations : " The test of an in- 
spired word is that it inspires^ not that it 
happens to be found between Genesis and 
Revelation. We save all the Bible, not be- 
cause we believe all, but because we value it 
as ancient literature. I regard those parts 
only as inspired which inspire me. The 
helping word is the divine word.''^ "We are 
to consider as inspired only those portions of 



lO Must the Old Testament Go ? 

the Old Testament which are not revolting 
to the most cultured modern mind."^ ** If 
anything in them does not approve itself to 
the reason and moral sense as true, it is to be 
rejected." ^ '' More depends on the credibility 
of the history and legislation of the Penta- 
teuch, than how much of it was written 
by Moses." ^ "The plain, central, heart-felt 
truths of the Bible that speak for them- 
selves and rest on their own indefeasible 
worth will assuredly remain to us."^ 

Some claim to find scriptural authority for 
this theory of Biblical Criticism in 2 Tim. 3 : 
16, as rendered in the Revised Version : 
" Every scripture inspired of God is also 
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for cor- 
rection, for instruction which is in righteous- 
ness." It would be logical to deduce from 
this statement the conclusion that no writ- 
ings that are not "profitable" in some de- 
gree and under some circumstances could 
possibly be God-inspired ; but it is certainly 
neither translation nor logic to deduce from 
this passage the rule : " No scripture which 



Personal Test of Inspiration, 1 1 

does not seem profitable to me is given by 
inspiration of God, and only the scripture 
which inspires me is God-inspired/' This 
egoism in Bible interpretation transforms 
the Divine Message into a bill of fare from 
which you take what you please, or what 
pleases you. 

The word " Scripture,*' in Paul's statement, 
is one which in New Testament usage does 
not refer to writings in general, any more 
than "Bible" in common usage to-day means 
book, but only to those Bible manuscripts 
which were then received as The Word of 
God. Whatever of the New Testament, 
"Scripture," as he used it, did or did not 
include, it referred at least to the Old Tes- 
tament, which the Jews had in its present 
collected form in the Greek Septuagint trans- 
lation from 288 B. C., and in their Hebrew 
Bible much earlier still. Even Prof. Rob- 
ertson Smith admits that the books of the 
Old Testament were all accepted as canonical 
by the Jewish church before the time of 
Christ, except Esther, Canticles, and Eccle- 



1 2 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

siastes, whose canonicity he shows was ques- 
tioned, but not that their endorsement was 
insufficient. It is hke the case of Luther 
condemning the epistle of James, while the 
church accepted it. 

It is evident that Paul means to say to 
Timothy, "Every part of your Bible is God- 
inspired and therefore profitable for convic- 
tion, or for conversion, or for Christian 
culture.''^ Surely this passage cannot be 
made to bulwark the theory, that Scripture 
is to be accepted or rejected by the ther- 
mometer of a single individual's moral sense 
and "intuitions.""^ Many, if not all, of those 
who hold this theory do not feel that any 
Bible warrant for their test of inspiration 
is necessary. 

But if this theory of criticism is true, 
without regard to proof-texts, and if we are 
to consider as inspired only those portions 
of the Old Testament that approve them- 
selves to the reason and moral sense of the 
clearest and strongest minds, of what prac- 
tical value is the test, since it can be 



Personal Test of Inspiration, 1 3 

perfectly applied only by one whose moral 
and logical senses are perfect, not dimmed 
by the least prejudice or by any defect 
of moral perception. A strong prejudice 
against the supernatural or in favor of 
evolutionary theories® would vitiate the 
application of this test, just as a thermome- 
ter plunged in warm water would not cor- 
rectly indicate the weather. When a man 
comes to his Bible believing in advance of 
investigation that evolution must be the rule 
of all spiritual as well as of all physical 
life, saying, ''Christianity must fit into this 
universal order," ^ he has put green glasses 
on the eyes of his reason and moral sense, 
and will see everywhere not truth-trends 
but proof-texts of religious Darwinism, as 
surely as the Calvinist, whom he condemns 
for his method of Bible study, sees every- 
where proof-texts of foreordination through 
his blue glasses. 

Both critics and Christians are to come 
to the Bible as unbiased as a little child, and 
study its truths instead of seeking props to 



14 Must the Old Testament Go ^ 

their prejudices. If every man is to be 
allowed to cut out of his Bible as ^^unin- 
spired'' whatever does not ^^ inspire'' him, 
because it collides with his prejudices, the 
work of destructive criticism will be greatly 
"expedited/* 

As a matter of fact, how does such a 
test work? Take two men of equal mental 
power and education and moral culture, 
and to the moral and logical senses of one 
it seems more reasonable to believe that 
chance evolved the first woman from a 
poUiwig, than to believe that an Almighty 
God created her from Adam's side. To 
the moral and logical senses of the other, 
the reverse is far more reasonable. The 
moral and logical senses of one man repu- 
diate the story, declared in the Old Testa- 
ment and confirmed in the New,^° that God 
commanded Abraham to offer Isaac as a 
sacrifice, intending to stay proceedings after 
Abraham had been tested, and before any 
fatal result had* been reached. The moral 
and logical senses of another find no rea- 



Personal Test of Inspiration, 1 5 

son to call this ungodlike and unkingly 
while applauding as wise (as all have done, 
even in Pompeii, where a picture of the 
scene has recently been discovered) the 
precisely similar act of Solomon, who, to 
test two women, each of whom claimed a 
certain child as her own, ordered the child 
to be cut in two, no more intending to have 
it done than God expected to have Isaac 
slain, but proposing simply to reveal and 
develop the true and false in the characters 
before him. 

One man's moral and logical senses are 
shocked by the story of Balaam's ass speak- 
ing; another finds no inconsistency in the 
statement, that the God who has created 
parrots with the power of speech, has caused 
other creatures of the animal kingdom to 
speak when some moral or spiritual emer- 
gency called for such a miracle. The moral 
and logical senses of many people reject as 
untrue the story of Jonah. Christ thrice 
quoted it as true history, with no shock to 
Uis moral and logical senses. ^^ 



1 6 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

It is dogmatically said by Colenso and 
Robertson Smith that Christ quoted this 
and other Old Testament stories as legend, 
not as history. ^^ But what speaker does not 
know that if he should take a legend from 
the Arabian Nights to illustrate the resur- 
rection of Christ, and say, '^As surely as 
Sindbad was lifted from the valley into the 
air by the gigantic bird, Christ rose from 
the dead by His own. power,'' the resurrec- 
tion itself would be weakened rather than 
strengthened by the illustration, and the 
suggestion would at once occur that both 
were alike untrue. When an ignorant ora- 
tor declared that something he had stated 
was as "certain as that Romeo founded 
Rome," a decided suspicion was thrown 
over the original statement. If Christ, 
in His numerous quotations of the Old 
Testament histories, knew that they were 
legends while He constantly referred to 
them as facts, or if they were legends 
and He mistook them for truths, we must 
jogically infer that in His statements as 



Perso7ial Test of Inspiration, ly 

to morals and religion, also, He was liable 
to error. 

The Bible is so wonderfully interwoven 
that the denial of the Old Testament his- 
tories logically leads to the rejection of 
Christ's authority, while the acceptance of 
Christ's authority logically compels the ac- 
ceptance, also, of the truthfulness of the 
Old Testament. 

Why should it seem to any one impos- 
sible that the God who could continue the 
life of Jonah for months in the body of his 
mother, could preserve his life for a few 
hours in the stomach of a great fish } This 
is but one of many cases where a Bible 
miracle is scoffed at as impossible, although 
paralleled every day by similar and greater 
miracles in the ordinary processes of na- 
ture. For instance, the resurrection, of 
w^hich Jonah's story was made the illustra- 
tion, — 

" The miracle is not so great 
Of ours, as is the rising of the wheat." 

Indeed in that very book of Jonah there 



1 8 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

are two greater miracles than the one so 
much disbeUeved : the repentance and con- 
version of all the inhabitants of Nineveh, 
a city as large as Philadelphia, — an event 
unparalleled in any modern evangelism ; and 
the very existence of **a foreign missionary 
book in the midst of the Old Testament/' ^^ 

To the moral and logical senses of a once 
famous Boston preacher many of the Old Tes- 
tament lessons selected for Sunday-school 
study during the last eight years seemed 
profitless and uninspiring, so much so that 
by voice and pen he condemned them as 
having no value in the present age.-^^ But 
to the moral and logical senses of Dr. John 
Hall, Dr. Wm. M. Taylor, Dr. J. H. Vincent, 
and scores of other lesson-writers whom the 
world has delighted to honor, those same 
lessons were found to be full of things in- 
spiring to noble life, and ''profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- 
struction in righteousness." 

The impracticability of the personal test, 
that scripture is only to be considered in- 



Personal Test of Inspiration, 19 

spired if it inspires me, is fully proved, 
then, from the fact that persons of equal 
intellectual and spiritual culture obtain ex- 
actly opposite results by this variable ther- 
mometer. 

Indeed, the same difference appears be- 
tween the impressions of Scripture which a 
man has at one time and those of the same 
man at another time, in another mood or 
in another experience, or especially when he 
has another purpose to accomplish in prac- 
tical Christian work. The passages that 
seemed profitless in prosperity commend 
themselves to him as rich and profitable in 
adversity. Those that have little interest in 
youth become mines of wealth in age. 
Those that may seem untrue at one period 
of life, will have been approved by later 
experiences. 

This test of Scripture, then, applied from 
a personal standpoint, is valueless because^ 
of the differences in men and the defects 
in the moral and logical faculties of every 
one who uses it. That man must be a 



20 Mttst the Old Testament Go ? 

supreme egotist who supposes that the com- 
pass of his moral sense and reason will in- 
fallibly detect all that is inspired in the 
Bible, and reject only what is uninspired. 

Suppose we should apply this test of 
individual reason and moral sense to human 
laws. 

"No rogue e'er felt the halter draw, 
With good opinion of the law." 

So in varying degrees, even in cultured 
society, each one's favorite sin or previous 
prejudices warp his opinion. There is 
hardly a law in our statute books that is 
not opposed by some cultured mind. Are 
there not persons of education who tell us 
that their moral sense condemns laws relat- 
ing to prohibition .? Others say that their 
moral sense vetoes suffrage, or marriage, or 
capital punishment, or private ownership of 
property. In the universities of Russia 
there are men of education who think that 
common sense and moral sense condemn all 
government, all society, all rights of prop- 
erty, and approve as right nothing less than 



Personal Test of Inspiration. 2 1 



Nihilism, — communism in love and land. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes reminds us that 
^'as iron is almost never found in the earth 
pure, but usually in some combination, as 
the sulphuret of iron, the oxide of iron, etc., 
so truth is seldom found pure in human 
minds, but rather as the Jonesate of truth, 
and the Brownite of truth." 

The test of inspiration by a man's moral 
sense is therefore unreliable, because that 
moral sense is usually found in some com- 
bination with selfishness or prejudice . 



22 Must the Old Testament Go ? 



II. 



Is THERE ANY PART OF SCRIPTURE WHICH HAS 
NOT INSPIRED SOME MINDS? 

The test of Scripture by its profitable- 
ness and power to inspire men might be 
appropriately applied by asking, " Is there 
any part of the Old Testament that does 
not approve itself to the moral and logical 
senses of some noble and cultured minds as 
true, reasonable, and profitable ? *' In an- 
swer we could quote from the most promi- 
nent thinkers of the last two centuries, 
passages to show that every part of the 
Old Testament has proved itself inspired 
by inspiring *^ these most cultured modern 
minds." 

Dr. Bellows, the distinguished Unitarian, 
said, "Nothing can ever change or destroy 
the sublime merits and religious influence 



Tested by Universal Coiiscioicsness. 23 

of the Mosaic Dispensation." Miss Sarah 
Smiley, a speaker and writer of the utmost 
intellectual and spiritual refinement, finds 
profitable and helpful lessons even in the 
Bible's lists of names, as reminders that 
God thinks of us, not in masses^ as public 
orators do, but as individuals, '^calling* His 
own sheep by name/' Indeed, there is at 
least one record of a conversion in con- 
nection with one of these lists, — that of 
the 5th chapter of Genesis, — where the 
oft-repeated expression, ^^And he died," 
after each name, reminded a man who 
heard this chapter read, of the certainty of 
his own death, and thus led him to a 
religious life. Guizot, one of the greatest 
statesmen of France, declared his firm be- 
lief in the history of the Old Testament 
as well as the evangelical Christianity of 
the New. Gibbon declares Job to be ^^a 
sublimer book than anything in the Koran," 
and Carlyle pronounces it ^^the sublimest 
poem of all ages." Locke, the philosopher, 
'^died to the delicious music" of the 



24 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

Psalms, read by his bedside at his own 
request. Humboldt eulogizes the 104th 
Psalm as **a concise and complete descrip- 
tion of the whole cosmos, — a psalm of the 
world/' John Milton wrote, "There are no 
songs to be compared to the songs of 
Zion ; no orations equal to those of the 
prophets; no politics like those the Scrip- 
tures teach. I shall wish I may deserve 
to be reckoned among those who admire 
and dwell upon them.'* Spurgeon has said 
that he has little confidence in that man's 
piety who thinks lightly of Solomon's Song. 
Dr. Strong, one of the Bible revision com- 
mittee, who is recognized as a leading 
scholar, while accounting this statement of 
Mr. Spurgeon "harsh," declares that he 
finds nothing offensive to his moral sense 
in Solomon's Song, but that on the other 
hand it approves itself to his spiritual 
taste. A devout rabbi once called it 
"The Scripture's Holy of Holies." Mat- 
thew Arnold has edited the second part 
of Isaiah as a text-book for the culture of 



Tested by Universal Consciousness. 25 

the imagination in English schools. Even 
Weiss, the free-religionist, exclaims, ** The 
prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah can be 
matched by no other literature in the 
world." Sir Isaac Newton devoted his 
kingly intellect to a careful preparation of 
a book on Daniel. Franklin, although an 
infidel in early life, was won to admiration 
of the Old Testament by reading it, and 
pronounced the prayer of Habakkuk one of 
the sublimest passages in all literature. 

Such references from ^'the most cultured 
modern minds'* might be given if neces- 
sary in connection with almost every page 
of the Old Testament, — even those most 
offensive to some critics. 

The writer has the custom of marking 
in his Bible with a red cross every text 
which he knows to have been the means 
of converting a soul. There is such a red 
cross in that first verse of Genesis, '^ In 
the beginning God created,'' which would 
not at first thought seem to be spiritually 
profitable, but led a Japanese student, who 



26 Must the Old Testmnent Go ? 

read it in a Chinese Bible, to read further, 
and thus made him a Christian. There is 
also a red cross in the second command- 
ment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
graven image,'' which caused the conver- 
sion of a Roman Catholic. In the story of 
David fighting with Goliath, there is another 
red cross, for that story, read in a street 
meeting by a lay preacher of England, led to 
the conversion of a notorious prize-fighter, 
Bendigo, whose attention was attracted by 
the "set-to," as he called it, and listening 
attentively for the result, he learned spiritual 
lessons which soon led him to a Christian 
life. 

If one knew Christian history as the 
angels know it, he could doubtless put 
such a red cross mark into every chapter 
of the Old Testament. The test of the 
Bible's inspiration by its power to inspire 
would thus confirm every part of the 
Scriptures, if broadly applied by universal 
Christian consciousness rather than by in- 
dividual sentiment. 



Tested by Christ's Reason. 27 



III. 



How FARED THE OlD TESTAMENT WHEN TESTED 

BY Christ's Reason ? 

The world has seen but one person who 
could properly make the application a per- 
sonal one, and whose reason and moral 
sense would infallibly reject that which was 
uninspired and accept that which was God- 
inspired. The Lord Jesus Christ, by uni- 
versal consent, is the only one that "e'er 
wore earth about him" whose intellectual 
and spiritual powers were absolutely un- 
dimmed by any prejudice. To both skeptics 
and Christians He is "The purest among 
the mighty, and the mightiest among the 
pure."^^ Let us then ask how the Old 
Testament fared when tested in its history 
and precepts by His perfect moral sense. 
What was the attitude which Christ took 
toward the Old Testament, which has been 



28 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

fitly called ''the Saviour's Bible," since He 
had it in substantially the same form in 
which we have it ? 

The use which Jesus made of the Old 
Testament will show its bearing upon the 
Christian life of to-day. To the true 
Christian the clear testimony of Christ 
''concludes debate." He is "the Amen, 
the faithful and true Witness." 

Observe^ then^ that Christ did not ^' treat 
the Bible like any other book'' As Dr. H. 
M. Dexter has said, " No critical exami- 
nation of it could be more utterly unrea- 
sonable and untrustworthy than that which 
should disregard the most patent fact con- 
cerning it, — that it is not like any other 
volume known to men." To Him it was 
not a dead body for a critical dissecting 
table, but a "living" messenger from the 
Most High, bringing tidings and commands 
to men. He condemned the mistake of 
those who " searched " only its surface, 
who counted its letters, but failed to secure 
the life it offered. 



Tested by Christ's Reason, 29 

Chrisfs familiarity with the Old Testa- 
"tnent is shown by quotations from nearly all 
of its books in His i^ecorded addresses and 
conversations. If we had His unpublished 
discourses also, we should doubtless have 
quotations from every Old Testament book. 
As it is, we have them from Genesis, 
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 
Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Psalms, Prov- 
erbs, Solomon's Song,^^ Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, Daniel, Jonah, Micah, Joel, Zech- 
ariah, Malachi.^^ 

Those Bible critics who assail almost 
every part of the Bible, unanimously leave 
the sermon on the mount unmangled as 
the -unquestioned utterance of Jesus Christ. 
Within the Christian church even those 
who ignore or reject the Old Testament 
usually agree with the sentiment of Daniel 
Webster in regard to this discourse, '^The 
sermon on the mount cannot be a merely 
human production." And what parts of the 
sermon on the mount are reckoned of high- 
est value and inspiration } It would usually 



30 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

be answered, the Beatitudes, the Lord's 
Prayer, the Golden Rule, the command to 
love all men as our neighbors, the exhor- 
tation to love our enemies, the comments 
on the commandments as kept or violated 
by the state of the heart, the reference to 
fasts to be kept in spirit and not merely 
in form, and the declaration of God's care 
for ravens and other creatures of nature. 
These are the elements in the sermon on 
the mount which have won the eulogy even 
of those who condemn the Old Testament. 
But every one of these is either a quota- 
tion or paraphrase of the Old Testament, 
with which Christ's spirit was so saturated 
and His memory so filled that its principles 
in new forms and fuller utterance make up 
His inauguration discourse. 

Every one of the Beatitudes is a quota- 
tion either of the letter or spirit of some 
Old Testament passage. It is in Psalms 
37:2, that it is declared first that ^^ the 
meek shall inherit the earth." It is in 
Psalms 24 : 3, 4, that we are first reminded 



Tested by Christ's Reason. 31 

of the blessedness of those who have clean 
hands and a pure heart. It is in Isaiah 
61 : 3 that the blessedness of those that 
mourn is first declared; and there are three 
passages in Isaiah and the Psalms that tell 
us of the blessedness of the poor in spirit, 
in whose contrite hearts God dwells. ^^ The 
blessedness of those that hunger and thirst 
after righteousness/^ of the merciful, ^^ and 
of the peace-makers,^^ are also declared re- 
peatedly in the Old Testament. The Lord's 
Prayer is really a paraphrase of Chron. 29 : 
10-13: ''Blessed be Thou, Lord God of 
Israel, our Father forever and ever. Now, 
therefore, our God, we thank Thee and 
praise Thy glorious name. Thine, O Lord, 
is the greatness and the power and the 
glory and the victory and the majesy; for 
all that is in the heavens and in the earth 
is Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, 
and Thou art exalted as head above all," 
etc. The command, '' Love thy neighbor 
as thyself," often spoken of as ''a New 
Testament commandment," is only a quo- 



32 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

tation from Lev. 19 : 18; and the exhorta- 
tion to ''love our enemies" was given at 
least thrice in the Old Testament, — Christ's 
words being a free quotation from one of 
them.^^ As to the Golden Rule, Jesus 
Himself said that He learned it from the 
Law and the Prophets. ^^ 

It is sometimes intimated, that Christ 
introduced an entirely new element into 
the Decalogue when He said, '* He that 
hateth his brother is a murderer," and 
"He that looketh on a woman to lust after 
her, hath committed adultery with her al- 
ready in his heart." ^* But instead of in- 
troducing a new principle Christ was simply 
turning on these commands the light of 
the tenth commandment, as Paul intimates 
in Romans 7:7: ''I had not known lust 
except the law had said, thou shalt not 
covet " ; and it was Moses who first de- 
clared that love to God and love to man 
was the essence of the Law, that is, that 
one would keep the commandments accord- 
ing to the condition of his heart. 



Tested by Christ's Reason, 



Christ's suggestions about fasting,^^ and 
His tender references to the ravens and 
sparrows,^^ were learned from His Old Tes- 
tament. Did Christ say, ^^Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness " ? 
He found the thought in Psalms 35 : 10. 

What Mr. Beecher has said of the Be- 
atitudes might be said of the whole ser- 
mon on the mount, — that its sentiments are 
Old Testament bells, which Christ grouped 
into a chime. If ''the sermon on the mount 
cannot be a merely human production,'' what 
shall we say of the Old Testament chapters 
from which its sentiments were taken } 

A similar fact will appear by examining 
the other discourses of Christ, so much 
eulogized by those who depreciate the Old 
Testament. Christ, in the 15th chapter of 
John, gives us a wondrous discourse on 
Christians as the branches of the true Vine ; 
but this is only the fuller development of 
an Old Testament parable, — Christ as a 
spiritual preacher amplifying and develop- 
ing an Old Testament text.^^ 



34 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

So the conception of God as a Good 
Shepherd and the church as His flock is 
not found first in the Gospel of John,^^ but 
in Moses,^^ and David/^ and Isaiah.^^ Some 
of the most beautiful conversations and dis- 
courses of Christ present Him as the 
Bridegroom and the church as His bride ; 
but all His parables on this subject are but 
the flowering out of Old Testament seed- 
thought.^^ In the Old Testament it was 
first said, ''The Lord of Hosts is Thy hus- 
band." ^^ In the Psalms the church is rep- 
resented as the King's daughter, — a bride 
brought to the Bridegroom in joy and glad- 
ness.^^ So Christ's sermons on Himself as 
the Light of the world are but paraphrases 
and amplifications of the thought which 
runs through all the prophets, that as sin is 
darkness Christ brings light. By the side of 
this evident fact, that Christ's teachings were 
but the fuller expression of truths which 
He had first read in the Old Testament 
Scriptures,^^ on which He had poured the 
light of His divine consciousness, express- 



Tested by Christ's Reason. 35 

ing them more fully by His life and words, 
put the false and careless statement of one 
who claims to be a New Testament Chris- 
tian, and who represents a few in the evan- 
gelical churches : ^' The preaching and teach- 
ing of the Old Testament Scriptures is a 
most unchristian-like custom, for which Jesus 
nowhere gives any greater sanction, explicit 
or implied, than He does for the indiscrimi- 
nate uses — as if it were the very Christian 
Gospel — of Confucius and the Koran." ^^ 
Such words could come only from persons 
who are ignorant of the real contents of 
the Old Testament, and also of Christ's 
method of using it, — only from those who 
have studied books against the Bible, in- 
stead of the Bible itself. 

It appears, then, from observing the atti- 
tude of Christ toward the Old Testament, 
that if we would follow Him, we should fill 
our memories and hearts with the history 
and precepts of the Old Testament (as well 
as the New) as profitable for the conviction 
and conversion and culture of human souls. 



36 Must tlie Old Testament Go ? 



IV. 



Did Christ's Moral Sense reject the Old 
Testament Histories as Incredible? 

Christ showed the falsity of that modern 
view of inspiration, which claims correct- 
ness for the Scriptures only in their moral 
and spiritual statements, — not in their his- 
torical and scientific references, — in that He 
eiidorsed the truthfulness of nearly all the 
great historic events and miracles recorded 
in the Old Testament^ especially those most 
S7ieered at to-day. 

*'The whole controversy in Protestantism 
may be summed into the question whether 
the Bible is God's Word or co7ttains God's 
Word"^^ adulterated with numerous errors. 
This controversy is far more important than 
the debate on Probation, for it underlies 
that and all other religious questions. If 



Christ and Old Testameiit History. 37 

the source of the Bible is not a super- 
natural God, but natural growth, and its 
contents are not truth, but a medley of 
good and evil, — if, in short, it is mistaken 
in its records of the past, then it matters 
little what it says about the future. 

But I have already shown that the Lord 
Christ quoted the Bible histories as true. 
To Him the Bible is the Word of God. 
He gives no encouragement for the theory 
that it cojitains truth in a solution of error. 

He quoted as historic facts, with no hint 
of legendary or mythological elements, with 
no shock to his moral sense, the stories of 
our first parents in Eden, of Abel, of Noah, 
of Abraham, of Lot, including the destruc- 
tion of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot's 
wife becoming a pillar of salt ; of Isaac, of 
Jacob, of Esau, of Moses, including the 
burning bush, the miraculous manna, and 
the healing by a look at the brazen ser- 
pent ; of David, of Solomon and the Queen 
of Sheba, of Elijah raising the widow's son, 
of Elisha restoring Naaman, of Jonah saved 



38 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

from the great fish, and his warning of 
Nineveh, etc.^^ 

In some dry-goods stores, in order to pre- 
vent dishonesty among the clerks, a three- 
fold system of checks is used. A clerk 
records each sale that he makes, and his 
number, on a little block of paper, at the 
top, the centre, and the bottom. One of 
these is torn off and put on the cashier's 
file; another is dropped into a locked box, 
of which one of the firm has the key ; 
and the other is kept on the salesman's 
stub. At the end of each day the total 
amount of sales against the clerk's number 
on these three records must tally. The 
cashier's file must confirm the salesman's 
stub, and the lock-box confirms or corrects 
the other two. So God has provided for 
the confirmation of the historic truth of 
His Word. First, the records are given 
in the Old Testament ; then they are con- 
firmed by the quotations made by Christ 
and His apostles; and more recently another 
confirmation comes from the locked boxes 



Christ and Old Testmnent History. 39 

of unearthed Oriental cities, which, as they 
are explored, give us on their stone tablets 
a third record, confirming the biographical 
and geographical accuracy of the Old Tes- 
tament histories. 

By eight hundred and eighty-nine quota- 
tions^^ and allusions to the Old Testament 
in the pages of the New, the two portions 
of the Bible are so interwoven that they 
become like the two sides of a two-ply car- 
pet. If we cut the threads of one side, we 
have destroyed the other also. If the Old 
Testament records are not reliable, neither 
are the words of Christ who confirmed them. 
Professor Swing, who claims to hold to 
the New Testament but rejects the Old, 
says, *^The story of the serpent and of the 
apple, and of the first clothing, might all 
have been added by legend. If the ques- 
tion is asked, 'Where shall the legendary 
end and the literal be allowed to com- 
mence?' we answer, 'No one can tell this.''' 
There is very little profit in any part of the 
Bible for one who stands on such shifting 



40 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

sands. One might as well anchor a ship 
to a floating log. If Christ mistook an 
Eden legend for a true history, a thinking 
man will very naturally infer that He might 
have been mistaken also in regard to morals 
and religion. If we cannot accept Christ's 
statement that Moses wrote in the book of 
the law, '^I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob,'' we may reasonably doubt His 
argument about the resurrection and im- 
mortality which is given in the same 
verse. 

If John was mistaken when he wrote, 
**The law was given by Moses" (John i : 17), 
what shall we do with the other statement 
in the same verse, that *^ grace and tnUh 
came by Jesus Christ".^ ^'What becomes 
of the divine authority of the decalogue, if 
it was not actually given to Moses by the 
finger of God on the peaks of Sinai ; if 
those thunderings and lightnings, and the 
sound of a trumpet, and the voice of Je- 
hovah, are either in whole or in part myth- 
ical imagination and coloring, and not 



Christ and Old Testament History. 41 

veritable history? It is impossible success- 
fully to maintain the credibility of the doc- 
trines of the Bible while denying that of 
the narratives which it contains/' ^^ When 
historical errors are charged upon the Bible 
it is usually found in the end that it was 
the critics who were in error after all. 
'^ Some years ago the Kuenens and Well- 
hausens of the day, with their Robertson 
Smith echoes, found that the inspired writer 
or compiler of the Chronicles had a very 
big and ugly hole in his inspiration. He 
had (2 Chron, 33 : 11) recorded that the king 
of Assyria carried Manasseh to Babylon, 
when, of course, no king of Assyria would 
have done such a thing. He would have 
carried him to Nineveh, his capital. But 
the ignorant writer, writing in a late age, 
perhaps in the Maccabaean period, had a 
dim notion of a Babylonish captivity in the 
past, and therefore naturally sent Manasseh 
to Babylon. The weak-backed Christians 
rushed at once into their favorite retreat 
in time of danger. ' Oh ! the Scriptures 



42 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

were not given to teach us geography or 
history.' These Scriptures may make all 
sorts of mistakes in every science, and tell 
us the moon is made of green cheese, and 
yet be God's holy word of truth ! Infidels 
chuckle when they find Christians ready to 
acknowledge that the Word of God, so rev- 
erently quoted and exalted by our Lord, is 
brimful of crude errors and ridiculous mis- 
takes. However, as to Babylon, when the 
Assyrian discoveries showed that Esarhad- 
don, the conqueror of Manasseh, lived not 
at Nineveh, but at Babylon, we did not 
hear any ' Beg your pardon ' from the 
learned critics, but they went zealously to 
work to find another ugly hole in the 
inspiration of the Bible." ^^ When a Chris- 
tian concedes that God's Word is not 
necessarily to be considered ^' truth " ex- 
cept in its moral and religious references, 
he surrenders the outer breastworks of 
supernaturalism, and opens the way for an 
attack upon the second line of defenses, 
by the theory that if there were mistakes 



Christ and Old Testament History. 43 

in the Old Testament about matters of 
history, there might be errors also about 
its laws ; and those who surrender to that 
attack generally feel it necessary to give 
up the third line of defenses also, and 
accept the theory that even Christ w^as not 
^^the Truth" in all His statements, which 
leaves the very citadel of supernaturalism 
defenseless. 

''The Bible was given to teach us how 
to go to Heaven, not to teach us how the 
heavens go," says a Christian, too hastily 
conceding, what has never been proved, that 
the Bible is inaccurate in its scientific refer- 
ences. Infidelity having driven the Christian 
from that breastwork, makes a new attack on 
the age and authorship of Bible books, and 
again he hurriedly retreats, saying, ''Jesus 
Christ and His apostles did not come into 
the world to preach Criticism to the Jews," 
which means that Christ couldn't distinguish 
true history from forgeries, His Father's 
laws from Ezra's. It is the first step that 
costs, — surrendering in a false liberality the 



44 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

outer breastworks of the Bible's historic 
truthfulness. 

If as Christians we really take Christ as 
our authority, we shall read the Old Tes- 
tament stories with confidence, as true rec- 
ords of the way in which God has dealt 
with men, and thus find them ** profitable," 
as indicating His feelings toward us, and 
His providential relations to the hearts and 
lives of men. 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ? 45 



V. 

Did Ezra Deceive Christ? 

Jesus uniformly spoke of the Pe^itateuch in 
such a way as to show His agreement with 
the universal Jewish belief in its Mosaic au- 
thorship, 

(i.) He said to the Jews, as one appeal- 
ing to a certainty that was universally ac- 
knowledged, ''Did not Moses give you the 
law, and yet none of you doeth the law ? '' 
(John 7 : 19; cf. John i : 17.) That ques- 
tion shows that Christ did not agree with 
the modern critics either in denying the 
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, or in 
the belief that the non-observance of the lazv 
t>roved its noji-existence. 

The word ''Law," or "Thorah," as used 
in Christ's time, had a specific and exact 
import, — exactly what we mean by " The 



46 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

Pentateuch," which was then one book. 
Therefore, when Christ associated the name 
of Moses with it. He was understood to 
coincide with the general behef in its Mo- 
saic authorship, against which not a doubt 
was uttered, even among the Jews, until the 
ninth century, twenty-four hundred years 
after Moses, and thirteen hundred years after 
Ezra. The fundamental principle of inter- 
pretation is to put ourselves in the place 
of those to whom an utterance was orig- 
inally made, and ask. What meaning did 
the words convey? — not, What meaning can 
we put into them } Unquestionably, Christ's 
words conveyed the meaning to his hearers 
that He believed with them in the Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch. 

Only such '^forced interpretations'' as a 
distinguished Unitarian recently admitted 
were necessary, in order to make the Bible 
anything else but an '^orthodox book;" 
such interpretations as would destroy 
Christ's deity, — can make Christ's words 
mean anything else than an agreement with 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ ? 47 

Jewish belief that the Pentateuch was 
"given" by Moses. 

The oft-repeated expression of Christ (as 
well as other Bible writers), " The law of 
Moses," ^^ had the same import. 

(2.) But Christ not only spoke of the 
Pentateuch as giveit by Moses, but also 
referred to it as ''his writings'' He said 
to the Jews : '' If ye believed Moses, ye 
would believe me ; for he wrote of me. 
But if ye believe not his writings, how 
shall ye believe my words .^ " *^ In numerous 
other passages Christ and His disciples 
speak of Moses as one who wrote, not 
merely a single prophecy of Christ (in Deu- 
teronomy), but many,^^ such as we find all 
through the Pentateuch, especially i7i Gen- 
esis, the very part whose Mosaic authorship 
is most disputed. 

The titles which Christ applied to the 
Pentateuch, ''Moses," and "Book of Mo- 
ses," ^^ as several of the critics have ad- 
mitted,^^ mean at least that Moses was the 
"central figure," the "chief person," of 



48 Must tke Old Testament Go ? 

Pentateuchal history and law. But even the 
conservative criticism that claims as written 
by Moses all of those individual laws or 
prophecies of the Pentateuch which are 
specifically declared in the Old or New 
Testament to have been written by him, 
leaves to Moses only a tithe of his Penta- 
teuch, — nineteen chapters of one hundred 
and eighty-seven/^ These critics therefore 
destroy their own explanation. They do not 
even allow him to be *'the chief person.'' 

If the Pentateuch was to be named from 
its central figures (the critics being judges), 
it would be ^^The Pentateuch of the Elo- 
hist, and the Jehovist, and the Second 
Elohist in close connection with the Jeho- 
hist, and the author of the Priest Code, 
and the Deuteronomist, and the Redactors." 
^'As to this Moses we wot not what has 
become of him"; but as to the Redactor 
''the critics always know where to find him 
when they want him, which is more than 
we can say for all the critics." 

If the majority of the critics are right, 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ ? 49 

Christ was either a deceiver or deceived, 
when He called the Pentateuch *^the Book 
of Moses/' instead of ''the Book of Ezra/' 
even though He meant only that Moses 
was ''the central figure/' According to the 
critics, He should have seen it was like 
the Presbyterian Review^ made up of half 
a dozen independent and sometimes con- 
tradictory documents, put together with no 
attempt at harmony by a redactor, alias 
editor, who is "not responsible for the 
views expressed in each article, but only 
for the propriety of admitting the article,'* 
alias document. 

It is certain, then, that Christ's refer- 
ences to the Pentateuch offer nothing but 
confirmation to the universal belief of His 
time, that Moses was not only "the cen- 
tral figure" and "the law-giver" of the 
Pentateuch, but also its writer Robert- 
son Smith, referring to his theory that 
most of the laws in the Pentateuch which 
are declared in their context to have been 
given by God to Moses, were really com- 



50 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

posed by Ezra a thousand years later, says, 
^'The current view of the Pentateuch is 
mainly concerned to do literal justice to 
the phrase, 'The Lord spake unto Moses, 
saying.' '' Nay, it is mainly concerned to 
do justice to the words of Jesus, ''Did 
not Moses give you the law?" and other 
passages in which He declared the Mosaic 
authorship of the Pentateuch so plainly, 
that even Robertson Smith and Colenso 
(both members of evangelical churches) 
were driven, in loyalty to their theories, 
to say with Unitarians that He Vas either 
deceived or a deceiver. Strangely enough, 
Robertson Smith omitted from his book 
on the Old Testament all consideration 
of the testimony of this Chief Witness. 
In his trial, however, he took the position 
that Christ, as well as the other Jews of 
His time, was deceived by the "legal 
fiction" of Ezra into believing that the 
laws of the latter were, as they claimed 
to be, "the law of Moses." "A legal 
fiction " is defined as a device in legal 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ ? 51 

records, such as the use of the imaginary 
names of ^^John Doe" and *^ Richard Roe," 
by way of illustration, in describing certain 
supposable cases of litigation concretely, 
a convention which everybody understands, 
and which therefore deceives nobody. But 
Ezra's ''legal fiction," it is admitted, 
deceived everybody, even the Son of God. 
The nearest parallels to Ezra's alleged 
"legal fiction" are those of Joseph Smith 
and Mohammed, who forged not the name 
of Moses but of God Himself, ''to give 
their laws impressiveiiess and historic prec- 
edent," as the critics would say. 

The testimony of Christ as to the 
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch has 
been so universally considered as clear and 
final by evangelical Christians, that the 
question, although discussed somewhat by 
Jews since the ninth century, and by 
Roman Catholics and infidels since the 
early part of the sixteenth century, has 
never been deemed worthy of special notice 
until of late. A few professors and preachers 



52 Must the Old Testament Go? 

connected with evangelical churches have 
become so inoculated with German ration- 
alism as to say that Christ was either 
deceived or a deceiver in His statements 
about Moses, or else that we are deceived 
in interpreting His words by the meaning 
they really conveyed. 

In these three theories we recognize three 
old foes with new faces. The irrational tac- 
tics which all evangelical Christians con- 
demned when used by so-called rationalists 
against Christ and the gospels, are now 
taken up by some evangelical professors, 
editors, and preachers against Moses and 
the Pentateuch. 

As it was said by radical Unitarians in 
the controversies about Christ, that in His 
statements about His own deity, He was 
either deceived by flattery, though great, 
or else was a passive deceiver, although unap- 
proachably good, so now that same straight 
crook is offered us by nominal Evangelicals 
in the irrationalism which says that the 
good Ezra might have deceived the Jews 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ? 53 

and Jesus, or that Christ Himself might 
have known that Moses was not the author 
of the Pentateuch and yet have innocently 
spoken of him as such. One of the evan- 
gelical critics recently took the ground, that 
Christ was sometimes mistaken even in His 
expositions of Old Testament texts, such 
as the passage ^'concerning the bush'' 
(Luke 20 : 37). 

As some conservative Unitarians, by 
'' forced interpretations," attempt to show 
that we have been deceived in under- 
standing Christ's words about His deity, 
in accordance with their natural and evi- 
dent meaning; so several evangelical pro- 
fessors of late have reverently appHed 
rationalistic tortures to the words of Christ, 
which even the critics generally admit to 
be plain declarations of the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch (although erroneous, 
as they claim), and seek to show that they 
may mean only that Moses was a contrib- 
utor to the Pentateuch, not its author or 
editor. 



54 Micst the Old Testament Go ? 

The real questions at issue, then, as in 
the Unitarian controversy, are, Can good- 
ness dehberately deceive ?^^ Can divine 
greatness be easily deceived ? Is the natu- 
ral or the ingenious and '^ forced inter- 
pretation '' of a passage to be received ? 

It will not do to say that Christ might 
be ignorant of the sciences of '^ Biblical 
criticism '' and of geology, and still meet 
our want as a religious teacher. ^^ What- 
ever He did or did not know of natural 
science, He certainly was not competent 
to be the world's religious teacher if He 
could not tell the true from the false in 
the very text-book of religion that He was 
sent from Heaven to expound to man. 
The reasonings on these points of even the 
professedly evangelical critics, strongly re- 
mind us of that school of miscalled ration- 
alists who attempted some years ago to 
prove that the miracles of Christ did not 
really occur, without impugning the truth- 
fulness of the evangelists, who, they say, 
** thought it no harm to describe the 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ? 55 

wading of Christ through the water as 
walking upon it/' This old blunderbuss that 
was long ago laughed out of the New 
Testament conflict, even by infidels them- 
selves, has been renamed " Higher Criti- 
cism," and brought as a new rifle into 
the Old Testament battle "for the de- 
fence (I) of Christianity" even by Evangel- 
icals, who do not see that it kicks harder 
than it shoots. Compare the ''rationalism'^ 
and ''orthodoxy" of the following extracts : — 



56 



Must the Old Testament Go ? 



Rationalistic or Unitari- 
an Explanation of the 
Ascension of Christ. 
" The truth probably is, 
that the early disciples, who 
thought they had seen the 
risen Jesus, /;^/^rrf^ from the 
discontinuance of his supposed 
appearances that he had as- 
cended into heaven. The ar- 
tistic writer of the third gospel 
probably received this ijzfer- 
ence as 2i substantial truths but 
thought it no harm to embellish 
zta.nd make it the groundwork 
of a.thrilling scene. His style 
plainly indicates that he was 
a man of some culture and 
considerable reading. He 
could not have failed to learn 
that the historians of his time 
were accustomed to take sim- 
ilar liberties with historical 
truths — [From The Radical, 
of Boston, deceased organ of 
radical Unitarians.] 

Unitarian Explanation 
of the Raising of Laz- 
arus. 

Renan tells us that Christ 
and the family at Bethany 
were ^^ persons of the pu7'est 
motives^'' and then explains 
the miracle by saying that 
probably Lazarus, being sick 
and pale, and knowing that 
Christ was coming, allowed 
himself to be put into a tomb 
that he might seem to rise 
from the dead, and thus give 
great glory to Christ. 



** Critical " Theory of 
the Pentateuch by an 
'* Evangelical" Preach- 
er. 

[Italics ours.] 
"The book that Hilkiah 
claimed to have rediscoz'ered 
(2 Knigs 22 : 8), then for the 
first tii7ie zvritten, in the inter- 
ests of an ethical and spiritual 
religion, was none other than 
the substance of the book 
of Deuteronomy. The pro- 
gramme of the prophetic re- 
formers, presented in its trtic 
light as a development of the 
ideas of Moses, was by the 
prophet Hilkiah sent to the 
king as the law of the 7iations 
founder. Read in this light, 
the book takes on afresh a/id 
fascinating interest. Rightly 
did legislators and historians 
through the after ages look 
back and ascribe all their 
work^"^ in the development 
of the national life to A/oses.''^ 
— [From "Wrong Uses of 
the Bible," by Rev. R. Heber 
Newton, Episcopalian, after 
Prof. W. Robertson Smith, 
Presbyterian.] 



Did Ezra Deceive Christ ? 57 

Whatever may be said of Bible histo- 
rians, evidently some modern critics ** think 
it no harm to take liberties with historical 
truth." God must not work miracles, but 
the critics can. They alone can make a 
straight crook ; a Saint Ezra, the forger ; 
a God-man deceived. 

So at every point the critics- seek to re- 
lieve us of little difficulties by substituting 
greater ones. With beams in their own 
eyes they are seeking to remove motes 
from ours. They strain out a gnat from 
the Bible's theories, but swallow a camel 
in their own. Critics may laugh at the 
uninspired and improbable tradition, given 
in the Apocrypha, that all of the earlier 
portions of the Old Testament, after being 
burned up, were miraculously restored by 
Ezra; but they ask us to believe the yet 
greater miracle^ that they can go behind 
the scenes of far-off centuries and tell us 
just when and where three or six or seven 
authors and editors had their quilting-bees 
to make a patchwork Pentateuch, adding 



5 8 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

to this miracle of '^intuition," which sur- 
passes even the traditional one of Ezra's 
memory, those masterpieces of all miracles, 
the theory of a holy forger and a deceived 
deity. 

The chief question, then, involved in the 
present controversy about the Pentateuch, 
is not. Did Ezra write most of the Penta- 
teuch ? but rather. Did Ezra deceive Christ ? 
that is. Did a good man deceive the God- 
man ? — a question of the highest impor- 
tance ; a question of ethics and theology 
more than of Hebrew roots ; a question not 
so much of learning as of logic ; a New 
Testament question as well as an Old Tes- 
tament one ; a question less of criticism than 
of character ; a question for the laity as well 
as for scholars^ since its solution depends less 
on uncommo7i learning than on common sense. 



Criticism Tested by Logic, 59 



vi. 



Will the New Theories about the Old Tes- 
tament BEAR THE TeSTS OF LOGIC 

Before considering the deep questions 
which we should need to examine if there 
were any reUable evidence that Ezra de- 
ceived Christ, our logic and common sense 
are called to the easier task of testing the 
theories of the critics about the Old Testa- 
ment, to see if their premises are well-attested 
facts, and their conclusions well taken ; in 
short, to ascertain if this so-called '' Higher 
Criticism " is, as it proudly claims, a ^'science" 
to which we need to ^* reconcile" our the- 
ology. This examination of the logic of the 
critics requires no conflict with their learn- 
ing. ^^ Because the men who do this thing 
are learned men^ thousands are ready to fol- 
low them^ or at least to shake their heads 



6o Must the Old Testament Go ? 

very wisely at their dicta, as if these were 
oracles not to be despised. But learned men 
have often been the biggest of fools. The 
knowledge of Hebrew and all the Semitic 
languages, however thorough and exhaustive, 
does not make a man wise. The learning 
of a whole university does not give a man 
common sense.'' ^^ If conclusions are not 
found to be well-taken, when tested by the 
familiar laws of evidence and reasoning, no 
amount of learning can save their theories. 
No matter how good the bricks may be in 
a house, it cannot stand unless it has been 
properly built, 

(i.) At the outset we see unmistakable 
evidence that most of the critics enter 
upon their investigation with an unscien- 
tific bias against the supernatural, to which 
is added, in many cases, a prejudice in 
favor of evolution. A true scientist, even 
when he begins his examination of phe- 
nomena with a ''working hypothesis'' 
already in mind, seeks to test it, not to 
prove it. If the facts do not confirm his 



Criticism Tested by Logic, 6i 

theory, he does not twist them into con- 
formity. He is open to conviction that his 
theory is wrong. But take the dozen most 
influential men of the Higher Criticism, 
from its beginning, — Astruc, Eichhorn, 
De Wette, Ewald, Colenso, Reuss, Kuenen, 
Wellhausen, Vatke, Kalisch, Robertson 
Smith, and Hermann Strack, — and ask 
each one of this jury, ''Could any amount 
of evidence prove to you the reality of 
miracles, that is of the supernatural.?" 
''Are you persuaded, in advmtce^ that 
evolution must be the law of religious 
history.?" A majority of this jury would 
answer "No" to the first question, or 
"Yes" to the second, or both. As Pro- 
fessor Curtis has said, "The modern critical 
theory, before beginning investigation, 
banishes the Divine factor from history." 
It is like the trial of Stephen. A majority 
of this modern critical court decides in 
advance of investigation, that the religion 
of the Old Testament is not a universal, 
but only a national, religion ; and before 



62 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

the trial is fairly begun, they are impetu- 
ously hurling their speculations and im- 
proved dogmas in their attempted martyr- 
dom of the supernatural. 

The prejudice in favor of evolution 
(which even Darwin never claimed was 
anything more than a probable hypothesis, 
and which leaves so many missing links 
that even Professor Swing ridicules its raw 
theories, and the editor of The Index calls 
for more proofs, and while many other 
scholars who have certainly no prejudice 
against it, show its inconsistency), — this 
prejudice in favor of evolution as the uni- 
versal plan of history, as well as nature, 
has proved in the minds of these critics a 
camera obsctcra to reverse the real position 
of things so that the decline and tall of 
the Jewish nation appears to them as a 

''Grand Forward March/' 
David. 

Jezebel. 

Captivity. 

Crucifixion. 

Dispersion. 



Criticism Tested by Logic, 63 

(2.) It is also especially notable that the 
experts and specialists of this so-called 
science, all of them claiming to work by 
the same scientific methods, disagree vitally 
and radically ort most of the points at issue. 

'' Gesenius, De Wette, Ewald, and Bleek 
say that Deuteronomy was composed long 
after the rest of the Pentateuch. Von Boh- 
len, Vater, Vatke, and Reuss assert that it 
was written first, and is the source of the 
ceremonial parts of Exodus, Leviticus, and 
Numbers. Ewald finds seven different doc- 
uments, and five different authors, in the 
Pentateuch ; others see two different docu- 
ments, and two different authors." ^^ 

Professor Briggs admits that while some 
suppose the second Elohist was used by the 
Jehovist, others think that he was used by 
the redactor of the Elohist and Jehovist. 
Some regard the Jehovist as the redactor 
of all but Deuteronomy, others the Deu- 
teronomist as the redactor of the whole. 
The experts of this so-called Higher Criti- 
cism differ six hundred years on the age of 



64 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

Obadiah, a thousand years on the age of 
Job, eleven hundred years on the age of 
Deuteronomy. Hitzig ascribes fourteen of 
the Psalms to David ; Ewald, by the same 
swift and scientific intuitions, finds that he 
wrote only eleven ; while Delitzsch considers 
forty-four Davidic. Strack admits that while 
the critics generally agree in the belief that 
there are five documents woven together in 
the Pentateuch, there is no general agree- 
ment as to their order and age. Differences 
of style which he considers marks of dif- 
ferent authors, Wellhausen cites as proof 
of different periods of composition. ''What 
value is to be attached to the argument 
of the Higher Critics, as to the ' Style 
and Diction ' of the so-called Elohistic and 
Jehovistic documents, may be learned from 
the fact that the ablest German Critics, a 
short time ago, proved from the 'Style and 
Diction' of the Elohistic document that it was 
the oldest of all and the basis of the Pen- 
tateuch, whereas the later German Higher 
Critics all prove, from the same ' Style and 



Criticism Tested by Logic, 65 

Diction/ that it is the youngest of all, and 
of post-exile origin." ^^ 

'* Those subtle critics who claim to pos- 
sess what they call a power of Higher Crit- 
icism are proved to be in the wrong by a 
simple fact which is apprehensible by any 
ordinary person so soon as it is stated. 
They tell us that they can point out how 
much Moses wrote, or how much Isaiah 
wrote, and how much other people wrote, 
by an inner consciousness, a capacity which 
enables them to detect various styles and 
variety of treatment ; and yet in spite of 
this inner consciousness they contradict 
each other, and we find almost as many 
schools of critics as there are separate 
critics. One man finds three writers in 
Genesis, while another discovers seven ; 
they are not agreed among themselves, 
though they have this inner faculty which 
enables them to detect styles and charac- 
teristics ; they are self-contradictory, and 
each man becomes the standard whereby 
he determines his own result. The fact is, 



66 Must the Old Testament Go? 

each man re-edits the Bible according to his 
own nature, or wish, or idea, so that it be- 
comes merely a book after his own heart." ^^ 
By these manuscript laws we are told 
that the last part of Isaiah cannot have 
been by the same author as the first part, 
because there is a slight difference of style. 
Precisely the same logic would show that 
Cowper's ''Task" and ''John Gilpin" 
could not have come from the same poet. 
The following from Bredenkamp, of Erlan- 
ger, is interesting as to the argument from 
style : " So long as Julius Fuerst assigns 
those parts of Genesis to pre-Mosaic time, 
which Wellhausen relegates to post-exile 
time, and the language interposes no veto 
to either; so long as speciahsts can con- 
found the beginning and the end of a his- 
torical period of language a thousand years 
in duration ; so long will this branch of Old 
Testament Science be obliged to be regarded 
as yet only in its swaddling-clothes.'" De- 
litzsch, although himself affected by a vario- 
loid type of this Higher Criticism, says : 



Criticism Tested by Logic. 6y 

*^Many of the former results of the critical 
school are now out of fashion. Its present 
results often contradict each other. In 
reality we know little and imagine that we 
know much." It is this masterpiece of 
guess-work which Robertson Smith calls a 
^* science," and compares with the well- 
established natural sciences. The so-called 
"Higher Criticism" has in it perhaps ''the 
power and potency " of a future science, 
but its evolution has not yet passed the 
period of chaos. 

What would be the standing of a so- 
called science of literature, some of whose 
experts, by the study of Shakespeare's 
style, located his works in the days of 
Alfred, while others, of equal standing 
and following the same principles, were 
quite as positive that they were produced 
in the days of Victoria, and yet others 
contended that the Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor was so different in style from Mac- 
beth that it must have been added by a 
pseudo-Shakespeare. 



68 Must the Old Testament Go? 

^'This * Higher Criticism' was rampant 
in the secular sphere long before it began 
to lay hands on the sacred ark. Asser's 
^Life of Alfred' was a few years ago as 
confidently asserted to be the work of a 
later age, as is the second part of Isaiah. 
Mr. Freeman and the best scholars now 
hold that it is in the main a valuable 
contemporary record of fact."^"^ 

Similar mistakes were made in regard 
to Homer also, as Schliemann's explora- 
tions have shown. But with all the confi- 
dence of infallibility and omniscience these 
disagreeing critics assume to tell just 
where in a sentence of the Bible the 
"redactor" spliced the work of the 
"Elohist" and **Jehovist," or corrected the 
" Deuteronomist.'' 

(3.) Even the points on which there is 
most general agreement among the critics 
are far from proven. 

Professor Curtis voices the sentiment of 
the church's scholarship, and its common 
sense as well, when he says, *' We 



Criticism Tested by Logic. 69 

reject the conclusions of the modern 
critical school, because their dicta are 
not established. They do not rest on 
scientific certainty, but rather on hy- 
potheses/' 

The earliest claim of the *^ Higher Criti- 
cism," on which most of its experts have 
agreed during several centuries, is the 
theory that there are incorporated into 
Genesis at least two distinct manuscripts, 
distinguished from each other in that the 
one uses the word Jehovah and the other 
ElohiiUy — the first corresponding to the 
word Lordy and the second to the word 
Gody — both of which, it is claimed, could 
not have been written by Moses. It would 
be about as reasonable to declare that two 
sermons of a modern preacher were not 
by the same man, because in one of them 
he used the word Christy — presenting His 
kingship ; and in the other, chiefly the 
word Jesus, — speaking of His power to 
save. Lange is probably right in saying 
that ''the two names for God in Genesis 



70 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

are not marks of two manuscripts, but of 
two relations of God/' 

Why do not the critics claim that Paul's 
Epistle to Titus is a patchwork of five 
manuscripts, because in it he uses five 
names of Christ, or that the first chapters 
of Matthew and Mark are added by a 
pseudo-evangelist, because only over the 
gateways of those two gospels is found 
the double name of ^' Jesus Christ"? 

It would no more disprove the inspira- 
tion and Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
teuch to show that Moses used other 
documents besides *^The Book of the Wars 
of the Lord," from which he expressly 
quotes, than it would disprove Macaulay's 
authorship of his English history, to show 
that he used pre-existing documents, — 
indeed, all through the Bible its inspired 
authors quote from other documents, sacred 
and profane, — but the two names of God 
prove little or nothing. If they prove the 
Pentateuch a patchwork, they prove the 
same for every book of the Old Testament, 



C^'iticism Tested by Logic. 71 

except the Book of Esther and the Song 
of Solomon, for in all, except these two, 
both of the divine names frequently appear. 
Indeed, both names appear all through 
some chapters and in many single verses,^^ 
where, perhaps, the documents of the 
Elohist and Jehovist collided. 

Even if the one point on which the critics 
are generally united, that the Pentateuch 
is documentary, should be granted, that is 
not inconsistent with the evangelical the- 
ory ^^ that Moses wrote at least a large 
part of them himself and was the in- 
spired *^ redactor" of them all, — the few 
side references that indicate a later time 
being all easily accounted for, as Profes- 
sor Curtis has said, as marginal notes of 
the Scribes which accidentally got into the 
text. 

What if there are three codes in the Pen- 
tateuch .? Suppose one was ^'the priest's 
code'' forever, and another '^the people's 
code " in the wilderness, and the third 
(in Deuteronomy) ''the people's code" for 



T2 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

their new circumstances in the land of 
promise, given prophetically in advance, as 
it claims to be, by one who knew they 
would have ^'gates'' and *' kings'' and 
"ships''? These are not evidence of later 
origin than the days of Moses, except to 
one whom no evidence can convince of the 
reality of supernatural prophecy. 

Another of the points of quite general 
agreement among the critics is the claim 
that the non-observance of many laws of 
the Pentateuch during a large portion of 
Israel's history, proves their non-existence, 
notwithstanding repeated statements in the 
Bible about such ordinances existing when 
neglected/^ In the same way the "Dark 
Ages" prove that the spiritual teachings of 
the New Testament were really "for the 
first time written" by Luther in the book 
which he "claimed to have rediscovered" 
in the monastery library. The true expla- 
nation of non-observance is that the Penta- 
teuch was for a long time a generally 
unrealized ideal of obedience^ as the gospels 



Criticism Tested by Logic, 73 

are still a generally unrealized ideal of love 
and trust. 

Yet another argument adduced for the 
theory that the Levitical legislation did not 
exist before Ezra, is the fact that the 
prophets spoke against sacrifices and feasts 
as a dependence for salvation. But this 
same mode of reasoning would prove that 
the preachers of to-day, who denounce 
heartless participation in the Lord's Supper 
and the superstitious use of baptism as a 
substitute for regeiieration^ have not yet re- 
ceived the divine commands of Christ to 
baptize in His name, and take the bread 
and wine in remembrance of Him. 

It is confidently urged, that the law in 
Deuteronomy against marrying foreign 
wives ^^ could not have existed until after 
the days of David and Solomon, because 
they did not obey it. That same '^critical" 
logic would prove that the law against 
adultery, which is admitted to be Mosaic, 
was not yet given. If we argued what laws 
are and when they came into force by the 



74 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

practice even of kings and presidents, we 
should reach some strange conclusions. 

No one who looks into this subject with- 
out the prejudice which comes from an un- 
conditional rejection of the supernatural as 
a thing that cannot be established by any 
evidence, will fail to see that these manu- 
script laws are the most uncertain kind of 
guess-work. The facts are to the theories 
as three grains of wheat in a bushel of 
chaff. Certainly these very uncertain laws 
of historical criticism should have no weight 
in the mind of a Christian against the word 
of Christ and His Apostles, by whom the 
historic statements of the Old Testament 
are confirmed. Growth cannot be put in 
place of God as the source of the Bible. 
Israel's religion was not like other religions, 
a Babel, built heavenward by men, but it 
is a Bethel revelation let down from 
Heaven. It was great at the very first be- 
cause it was from God. 

Criticism must learn to reach results step 
by step, by well-attested facts and accurate 



Criticism Tested by Logic. 75 

reasoning. Nothing less will persuade the 
Christian church that most of the Penta- 
teuch's five hundred and forty references 
to Moses ^2 as speaking, acting, writing, 
are forgeries with which Saint Ezra de- 
ceived Jesus Christ. Even in this matter 
of *' Biblical Criticism,'' we prefer the 
positive statement of the divine Christ to 
the learned guesses of the critics. ''Lord, 
to whom shall we go but unto Thee ? 
Thou hast the words of eternal life." 



^6 Must the Old Testament Go ? 



VII. 

Did Christ abrogate Old Testament Laws? 

Christ quoted Old Testament law as bind- 
ing in its principles on all countries and all 
ages. 

Three times He puts His stamp as the 
King of a new dispensation upon the Dec- 
alogue as the law of His Kingdom and of 
the world/^ 

Christ also quoted other principles and 
precepts of the Old Testament, as a lawyer 
or officer of to-day would quote unques- 
tioned law.^ Three times, at the tempta- 
tion. He said, ''It is written/' by way of 
introducing quotations of Old Testament 
law principles from Deuteronomy, other 
than those of the Decalogue, which He 



Cliinst and Old Testament Laws, yy 

used as binding upon all beings in earth 
and hell. Since Satan's great defeat by our 
Lord in the wilderness was accomplished 
by ammunition from Deuteronomy, it is no 
wonder he is stirring up strife against it. 
If it had been a forgery, the devil would 
have shown it up then. 

Christ declared that the whole law — 
meaning the Pentateuch — was of perpetual 
force ^^ in its principles ; of course, not in 
its superficial and incidental details. 

It has been said by opponents of the 
Old Testament, that Christ spoke of its 
laws as abrogated; but it will be observed 
by those who carefully read Christ's 
words, that while He condemned many 
laws of Jewish traditiony He confirmed the 
old law principles of the -Scriptures. For 
instance, Christ cut off the tradition, 
**Thou shalt hate thine enemy," which 
had been barnacled on to the Old Testa- 
ment law, ''Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor." ^^ When Christ refers to the Old 
Testament it is usually with the phrase, 



78 Must tJie Old Testament Go ? 

**It is written/' or **Have ye never 
read?''^^ — quoting each passage as absolute 
law. Christ's references to the old laws, 
when not confirming them, were chiefly in 
opening out their meaning, as a thoughtful 
preacher does in a textual sermon. ^^ 

Christ did indeed indicate that some of 
the Old Testament laws were no longer 
binding in the letter, since they were 
fulfilled in Himself, or outgrown because 
of the people's moral advance. ^^ But in 
the New Testament, as well as the Old, 
there are such temporary precepts that 
apply only to certain individuals to whom 
they were specially addressed, such as 
Paul's command to Timothy, in one of his 
epistles, to bring his cloak from Troas. 
In this, as in the Old Testament precepts, 
which have no longer literal application, 
there is, however, a kernel of profitable 
truth for all ages. That request of Paul 
opens up suggestions of his sufferings for 
Christ in the chilly prison, and also of 
the importance of guarding the health 



Ckfist and Old Testament Laws, y<^ 

when in Christian work, and thus has 
become the basis of inspiring discourses. 

As a lawyer keeps numerous volumes 
of court decisions because of the law 
principle that lies under the incidental 
particulars of each decision as its kernel, 
so all the law passages in the Old Testa- 
ment are profitable because they give us 
a volume of God's decisions. Looking 
below the names of Abraham, Jacob, and 
Daniel, as the lawyer looks below the 
names of Smith and Brown and Jones, 
who were engaged in a law case a 
hundred years ago, we find, as does the 
lawyer, principles of equity, glimpses into 
the eternal laws of right, which are much 
clearer when given in concrete historical 
instances than in abstract form. 

We cannot agree with those who say 
**that there is a radical difference between 
the Old Testament and the New in their 
ethical standpoints, that of the Old Tes- 
tament being exterior, the New, interior; 
the Old Testament dealing with conduct, 



8o Must the Old Testament Go ? 

the New with character ; one prescribing 
rules, the other principles ; the first regu- 
lating the life, the second breathing into 
the soul a new spirit/' "^^ In these words 
truth is sacrificed to antithesis. Moses 
most emphatically declared that obedience 
to God's law required not only external 
morality, but also love, — '^Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thine heart, 
with all thy soul, and with all thy 
might "; "^^ and the key-texts of the poetic 
books of the Bible are, *' Create in me a 
clean heart, and renew a right spirit 
within me," and '*Thou desirest truth in 
the inward parts." 

The prominent object of the prophets 
is to show that religion is not a matter 
of external form, but of character and 
life. 

The Old Testament as well as the New 
continually puts religion into these three 
words, — Love, Trust, and Obey. 

One would suppose that Christian min- 
isters^ who said, ''The law did not tell 



Christ and Old Testament Lazvs, 8i 

the young man that he must love the 
poor, the ignorant, the sinful, following 
them all of the days and years to bless 
them ; but it only commanded him not to 
kill any one, or cheat any one, or break 
the Sabbath," had never read the five 
books of the lav/ in which men are com- 
manded to love God, and to love all men 
as their neighbors,'^^ and to treat strangers '"^ 
of other nations *'as those born in the 
land," and to leave the gleanings of the 
harvest for the poor, and to treat with 
kindness even their enemies. 

We shall, then, find it profitable to 
study not only the precepts of Christ, but 
also the earliest laws that came from the 
same divine Source, as containing illustra- 
tions of the eternal laws of our Lord, 
Judge, and Father, who is the same yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever. 



82 Must the Old Testament Go f 



VIII. 

What was the Teaching of Christ in re- 
gard TO Old Testament Prophecies and 

Imprecatory Psalms ? 

*' I KNOW of no one passage of the proph- 
ets which can certainly be said to point 
to an event beyond the near future of the 
writer." So said an ''evangehcal " (?) pas- 
tor'^ recently to his people. This Inger- 
sollism masquerading at a Christian altar 
stands in decided contrast to the fact that 
Christ quoted numerous Old Testameut 
prophecies as fulfilled in Himself, 

He said of Moses, '' He wrote of Me/' 
and of the entire collection of Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures, ^'They testify of Me.'* 
He declared that the prophecy of Malachi,^^ 
in regard to the fore-runner of the Mes- 
siah, was fulfilled in John the Baptist, 



CJirist and the Imprecatory Psalms, 83 

and the prophecies of the Messiah's in- 
auguration in the beginning of His own 
ministry." He quoted Isaiah's description 
of the Messiah's miracles as a description 
of His own.'® He exphcitly stated at 
three different times that His rejection by 
the Jews had been declared in certain 
Old Testament prophecies/^ and twice He 
spoke of His betrayal as fulfilling what 
had been foretold. ^^ So also of His cruci- 
fixion.^^ The Apostles, who still further 
expressed the thought and feeling of 
Christ, declared that He fulfilled yet other 
prophecies in His life and resurrection. 

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews sug- 
gests the fact that one of the threads by 
which the Bible is bound into unity is 
"faith," — of course faith in its relations 
to Christ the Saviour, which is distinctly 
ascribed to the whole line of godly men, 
from Abel through the Old Testament 
history. 

We shall find it profitable, surely, to 
read the Old Testament as Christ did, 



84 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

and as He opened it to others, to find in 
all parts of it the things concerning Him- 
self/^ Indeed, the Christ of the New Tes- 
tament 7iever seems to be understood in His 
atoning mork except by those who have thor- 
oughly studied the history of Christ as given 
in advance in the Old Testament^ where He 
is so clearly pictured as *' wounded for our 
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities'' 
Here we are reminded of the common 
mistake among the most orthodox people, 
of assuming that the Old Testament is 
wholly or chiefly a revelatio7i of the Father, 
It would be far more correct to say, God 
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is re- 
vealed in every part of the Bible. Every 
one recognizes the numerous references to 
the First Person of the Trinity in the 
Old Testament. Christ, on the way to 
Emmaus, assures us that if we are not 
fools and slow of heart to believe all that 
the prophets have spoken, we shall find 
the Old Testament also full of references 
to the Son of God; and the Holy Spirit 



Christ and the Imprecatory Psalms. 85 

is hardly less prominent, being spoken of 
as having a part in creation/^ as coming 
upon heroes to inspire them to action, ^^ 
upon mechanics to direct them in work/^ 
upon prophets to aid them in speech, ^^ and 
into the hearts of the humblest be- 
lievers, who pray in the Old Testament 
times, **Take not Thy Holy Spirit from 
me."^^ 

One of the most prominent ^^ of those 
who think the Old Testament out of har- 
mony with the New, says that in the for- 
mer, '' God Himself wore garments, and 
was also seated on a throne, and held a 
sceptre, and was pictured as wheels within 
wheels, drawn by winged creatures from 
east to west." The same perverting of 
poetry and of simile might be applied to 
the New Testament, and one might say 
that God was represented in the gospels 
as a '* husbandman" dealing in grapes, as 
a *^ merchant" managing business, as a 
'' king " sitting on an actual throne in a 
city of golden streets, and also as '^made 



86 Must the Old Testament Co f 

flesh/' wearing garments, and sharing all 
the sorrows of humanity. In both Testa- 
ments the Invisible God is poetically rep- 
resented by figures and similes, and in 
both Testaments the Son of God visibly 
appears to men in a form like themselves ; 
all such passages, in the Old Testament 
as well as in the New, affording no diffi- 
culty in the light of that passage, '' No 
man hath seen God at any time ; the only- 
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the 
Father, He hath declared Him." 

Christ quoted other Old Testament prophe- 
cies besides those of the Messiah, as sure of 
fulfillment. For instance, the prophecy of 
the destruction of Jerusalem.^^ 

Christ interpreted some of the imprecatory 
Psalms as having a symbolic 7rference to the 
enemies of the Messiah, The 109th Psalm 
is universally considered the most severe 
of David's imprecations, and two verses of 
this are specifically mentioned by Christ as 
prophetic of Judas.^^ It should lead every 
one wdio really accepts the authority of 



Christ and the Imprecatory Psalms. 87 

Christ to a re-examination of the impreca- 
tory Psalms, if he has decided against them, 
to know that Christ had all these Psalms 
before Him in the prayer-book and hymn- 
book which he was constantly using ; that 
He made no unfavorable references to them, 
and quoted from them at least twice in His 
recorded discourses as having a spiritual 
bearing upon His own life and sufferings. 
In reading them, one should also remem- 
ber that they are poetry and not prose, and 
are no more to be literally interpreted than 
Shakespeare's words in regard to a great 
villain, — 

" Put in every honest hand a whip, 
To lash the rascal naked through the world." 

It should be remembered also that they 
were written by a man who was taunted 
with the words, ^^Thou lovest thine ene- 
mies '' ; who cut off Saul's robe when he 
might have cut off his head; who spared 
Shimei's life against the wish of his gen- 
erals, when the former was insulting the 



88 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

king by calling him a murderer and adul- 
terer ; and who sincerely mourned the death 
of his bitterest enemies and punished their 
murderers.^^ What an imprecatory (?) psalm 
was that which he sang at the death of 
his bitterest enemy, Saul, — 

Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their 
lives, 

And in their death they were not divided: 

They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger 
than lions. 

Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed 
you in scarlet, with other delights, 

Who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. 

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle ! 

It should be remembered, further, that 
even the New Testament commands those 
who love the Lord to hate evil ; so that 
David's hatred of wrong, as expressed in 
the Psalms, has no unchristlike character, 
if the thought of personal hostility is sep- 
arated from it. It should be remembered, 
further, that the 23d chapter of Matthew, 
from the lips of Christ, considering that it 



Christ and the Imprecatory Psalms. 89 

is prose, while David's Psalms are Oriental 
poetry, is as severe as any of them, de- 
nouncing as it does the Scribes and Phari- 
sees as '* hypocrites," '^serpents, ^* vipers," 
*'whited sepulchres," and ''children of the 
devil, who shall not escape the damnation 
of hell." ^^ These words were uttered by 
Christ against men who were His ''per- 
sonal enemies," and were constantly con- 
spiring to destroy Him. We read them, 
however, as we should, rejecting the thought 
that they could have been the utterance 
of personal hostility. Read David's Psalms 
in the same w^ay. It has been suggested 
that these "w^oes" of Christ should be 
read not bitterly but with a tone of tender 
reproach. Let David's like imprecations be 
read in the same tone. 

The imprecatory Psalms which Christ read 
in his Bible, we believe are "profitable" 
for Christians to-day, when there is so much 
of criminal leniency both in the judgment 
of the courts and of the people toward 
unrighteousness and wickedness. The man 



90 Must the Old Testame7it Go ? 

has lived a very dull life who has not, 
when reading of some peculiarly atrocious 
crime, without any personal feeling, uttered 
that modern imprecatory psalm, ^^ Hanging 
is too good for him," — the indignation of 
a soul in proportion to its purity, not to- 
ward a personal enemy, but toward wrong. 
Who, in reading the history of the 
Waldenses, betrayed, executed, robbed, 
murdered by thousands by the savage Ro- 
manists, has not entered into the spirit of 
Milton's imprecatory psalm, "Avenge, O 
Lord, thy slaughtered saints " ? Joseph 
Cook tells of a liberal Christian who ut- 
terly condemned the imprecatory Psalms as 
unfit to be read ; but when this patriot 
heard, at the opening of the war, that 
Baltimore, after the attack on our soldiers, 
was to be fired upon, he quickly and ear- 
nestly exclaimed, ''I'm glad of it." "So 
am I," said an orthodox preacher by his 
side, "only I was afraid to say so lest 
you should think I was uttering an impre- 
catory psalm." 



Christ and the Imprecatory Psalms. 91 

Abraham Lincoln, in a letter written Dec. 
II, 1864, said: ^'You say you are praying 
for the war to end. So am I, but I want 
it to end right. God alone knov/s how anx- 
ious I am to see these rivers of blood cease 
to flow ; but they mitst Jlow tmtil Treason 
hides its head'' What if David had ut- 
tered the same sentiments in poetry ? 



92 Must ike Old Testament Go ? 



IX. 

Are God's Tenderness and Man's Immortality 
Revealed in the Old Testament ? 

Christ reaffirmed the righteous warnings 
of the Old Testament agai^tst sin. It is 
frequently said by Bible students, within 
and without the evangelical church, that 
the God of the Old Testament and the 
New are not alike, — the one being a 
severe Monarch, and the other a loving 
Father. Such expressions as this are 
representative: ''In the Old Testament 
God is a King; in the New Testament 
the King is revealed as a Father. '"^^ 
''Between the God of the ancient Jewish 
theocracy and the God of the New theoc- 
racy established by Jesus, there exists in 
general the broadest and most funda- 
mental diversity. In the one case we 



God' s Tenderness and Mans Immortality, 93 

have the Lord God bringing up a special 
people out of Egypt ; in the other we 
have a Father in Heaven sending the 
gospel to every nation in the world. In 
the one case we have a jealous God visit- 
ing the iniquities of the fathers upon the 
children, to the third and fourth genera- 
tion of them that hate him ; in the other 
we have a benign Father 'who maketh 
His sun to rise on the evil and the good, 
and sendeth His rain on the just and 
the unjust'; so that the very theism of 
Jesus versus that of the ancient Jewish 
Scriptures is, in many most important 
particulars, of another realm and order. "^^ 
These conclusions are reached by a one- 
sided view of each Testament, seeking out 
only the references to the tender side of 
God in the New Testament, and only the 
revelation of God's justice in the Old. 
The fallacy of such reasoning will readily 
appear by applying the same plan in an 
exactly opposite manner, taking the pas- 
sages referring to the severity of God in 



94 MiLSt the Old Testament Go ? 

the New Testament and contrasting them 
with those referring to his tenderness in 
the Old. 

We open the New Testament and find 
that Matthew has more passages about 
judgment and punishment than any other 
book of the Bible. A tax-collector was 
inspired to write it as The Book of God's 
Reckonings with men in rewards and 
punishments.^^ In it ''woe unto you" 
occurs fourteen times, ''judgment" eight, 
"hell" eight, "fire" (referring to future 
punishment) four times, besides frequent 
use of such epithets toward the ungodly 
as "hypocrites," "vipers," "serpents," 
"dogs," "swine," "ravening wolves," 
"false prophets," "wicked and adulterous 
generation." In addition to these elements 
of severity, — all of them connected with 
God in Christ, — we find Him saying to 
Peter, "Get thee behind Me, Satan''; 
also using a whip of small cords to drive 
the traders out of the temple, which He 
declares they have made a "den of 



God's Tenderness and Man' s Immoriality. 95 

thieves''; cursing a fruitless fig-tree; call- 
ing the Pharisees *^ children of hell," '* fools 
and blind," ''liars and murderers," like 
''their father, the devil" ;^^ proclaiming as 
the punishment of unrighteousness "outer 
darkness, where there is weeping and 
gnashing of teeth — where the worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not quenched." It is 
also in the New Testament that God 
declared through Christ, "Whosoever shall 
fall on this rock shall be broken ; on whom 
soever it shall fall, it shall grind him to 
powder." And as for God's being revealed 
as a Judge and a King in the Old Testa- 
ment and not in the New, it is in Revela- 
tion, more than in any other part of the 
Bible, that God's judgeship and kingship 
and punishment of the wicked are pictured, 
in connection with the great white throne. 
In contrast with this severity of the God 
of the Nezv Testament, the Old Testa- 
ment represents God as Onr Father more 
than a score of times : ^"^ " The Lord thy 
God bare thee as a man doth bare his 



96 Mitst the Old Testament Go ? 

son," ''Doubtless, Thou art our Father, 
though Abraham be ignorant of us," 
"Like as a father pitieth his children, so 
the Lord pitieth them that fear Him," 
'' Have we not all one Father ; hath not 
one God created us ? Why do we deal 
treacherously every man against his broth- 
er?" ''He shall cry unto Him, 'Thou art 
my Father, my God, the Rock of my Sal- 
vation,' " "Thou, O Lord, art our Father, 
our Redeemer." 

But with a depth of tenderness still 
more remarkable, the Old Testament also 
compares God to a Mother — "As one 
whom his mother comforteth, so will I 
comfort you," "The mother may forget 
her child, but God will not forget," 
" When my father and my mother forsake 
me, then the Lord will take me up," "In 
Thee the orphan people find mercy," "As 
an ea-^le stirreth up her nest, fluttereth 
over her young, spreadeth abroad her 
wings, taketh them, beareth them on her 
wings, so the Lord alone did lead him." 



God's Tenderness and Man s Immortality. 97 

It was not the New Testament, but the 
Old, that first declared, ^^The Lord thy 
God loved thee."^^ 

These passages sufficiently indicate the 
incorrectness of the frequent statement 
about the character of God, as revealed 
in the two Testaments, being exclusively 
severe in the one and exclusively tender 
in the other. In both of them *^ Behold 
the goodness and severity of God/'^^ 

Hiram Powers, familiarly describing the 
process of his own mind in fashioning his 
celebrated bust of Jesus of Nazareth, re- 
marked that his great trouble had been 
found in giving the proper expression to 
the countenance. '' How could I put into 
the same marble face,'' he asked, ''the 
look of Him who pitied the sick and the 
aflflicted, who encouraged those of feeble 
mind in their faith, and who pardoned the 
penitent, together with the look of Him who 
uttered such terrible threats of w^oe against 
the hypocritical Pharisees in the 23d chap- 
ter of Matthew and the nth of Luke?'' 



98 Must the Old Testarnent Go ? 

In the same chapter where Christ says, 
*'Woe unto thee, Chorazin," He also says, 
*' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest."^^*^ 
In the same chapter where Christ says to 
the Pharisees, '^O generation of vipers," 
He says also to sincere and penitent souls, 
'' A bruised reed shall He not break, and 
the smoking flax shall He not quench." ^°^ 
In that most severe chapter of the Bible, 
the 23d of Matthew, in which the Phari- 
sees are called hypocrites, serpents, and 
vipers, Jesus utters, amid his tears, those 
words of unspeakable compassion : '' O 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets 
and stonest them that were sent unto 
thee ; how often would I have gathered 
thee, as a hen gathereth her brood under 
her wings, and ye would not ! " 

In the same Old Testament chapter 
that God is described as bearing Israel as 
a father bears his son, we are also told 
of God's anger toward sin.^^'^ In the 
same chapter of the Old Testament that 



Goers Tenderness and Mail s Immortality. 99 

we read the words, *'The Lord thy God 
is a consuming fire," we read in another 
verse the statement, *'The Lord thy God 
is a merciful God."^^^ 

The revelation of God's character in the 
New Testament and in the Old is con- 
cisely expressed, in its tenderness and se- 
verity, in tha-t Old Testament verse : '' And 
the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 
The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gra- 
cious, long-suffering, and abundant in good- 
ness and truth, keeping mercy for thou- 
sands, forgiving iniquity and transgression 
and sin, and that will by no means clear 
the guilty." ^^^ 

The Old Testament as well as the New, 
then, is profitable for the disciples of Christ, 
as it was for the Master Himself, as a rev- 
elation of both the love and justice of God. 

Christ declared that immortality was 
revealed in the Old Testament, as He 
expounded the signification of the words, '^I 
am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
Jacob," which He intimated was an indirect 



100 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

statement of immortality; ''for God," He 
said, ''is not a God of the dead, but of the 
living." ^^^ When God called Himself the 
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob after 
they had died and left the earth, He was 
reminding men that Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob were still living in another sphere. 

"Jesus said, as the Revisionists render it, 
' Ye search the Scriptures, for in them 
ye think ye have eternal life, and they are 
they which testify of Me.'^°^ Whether the 
verb 'search' be used in the indicative or 
the imperative mode, evidently Christ ap- 
proved of searching the Scriptures, — then 
only the Old Testament, — and also approved 
of the idea that in them was evidence of 
'eternal life' Since Christ approved of 
finding evidence of eternal life in the Old 
Testament, shall not we.?"^^'^ 

"The language of the Old Testament 
always presupposes immortality. The trans- 
lation of Enoch, the 'gathering to his 
people' of each of the dying patriarchs, 
and all such allusions in the Pentateuch, 



God's Tenderness and Man s Immortality. loi 

plainly refer to the then universal belief in 
the spiritual world. They are otherwise 
inexplicable. The expressions of the very 
ancient Book of Job, as well as of David 
and the prophets, show that they looked 
forward to a future life of blessedness and 
glory; 'fullness of joy,' 'pleasures forever- 
more,' 'righteousness,' 'satisfaction,' 'ever- 
lasting life,' 'everlasting joy,' and similar 
expressions,^^^ show their ideas of the life 
after death." ^^^ • ' 

Those who do not believe that immortal- 
ity is revealed or recognized in the Old 
Testament have a problem to solve in the 
fact that the catechism ^^^ of the Jews, 
who accept only the Old Testament part 
of the Bible, declares that the three fun- 
damental principles of Judaism are "God, 
Eterital Life, Revelation." Among other 
proof-texts of immortality from the Old 
Testament, the following are cited from 
the, Jews' English version of the Bible: 
"O give thanks unto the Lord for He is 
good; for to Eternity enditreth His kind- 



102 Must the Old Testament Go? 

7iess.''^^^ '' Surely there is a future state y 
and thy expectatio7i shall not be cut off''^'^'^ 
Many other passages • are also quoted. ^^^ 
But the question whether immortaUty was 
revealed and recognized in the Old Testa- 
ment has been definitely settled by a 
higher authority than the Jews, — by the 
specific and inspired statement in Heb. 
II : 9, 1 6, that Abraham *' sought for a city 
that hath foundations whose maker and 
builder is God," and that others of the 
patriarchs and heroes of earlier times, by 
their lives, "declared plainly that they 
sought the better country, that is, a 
heavenly/' 

This suggests to us, that, in order to 
profitably study the Old Testament, we 
are to recognize, that while every element 
of Bible truth was revealed in the Old 
Testament, it was much more fully re- 
vealed in the New, the Bible being like 
a tree which has, in its earliest stage as 
a sapling, all the elements which it has 
afterwards in full maturity, — the growth 



God' s Tenderness and Man s Iinmoriality. 1 03 

being in the increase of elements already 
possessed, not in the introduction of new- 
ones. -^^^ This characteristic of the Bible 
may be illustrated by the horizontal 
section of a tree, showing the rings of 
its successive growth, and the expansion 
of each part of its circumference with 
every added year. We find at the very 
beginning of the Bible's organism God 
revealed as a Father, but more and more 
so to the end of the New Testament. 
So the thought of God as a Shepherd 
of His people; as the vine which gives 
life to His people, the branches ; as Light 
to banish the darkness of sin ; as King 
of all; as the Lord of Nature; as the 
Judge of all ; a^ the Bridegroom of the 
church; as a Bleeding Lamb for sacrifice; 
as the Holy Spirit; as the Bread of Life; 
as the Water of Life. All these lines of 
truth are found in the Bible in its 
earliest Old Testament pages as in the 
heart of a tree, but expanding like the 
increasing circumference of a tree, with 



I04 Must the Old Testament Go? 

the added growth of psalms, prophets, 
gospels, epistles. Christ reproved Nicode- 
mus, because as a master in Israel he 
knew not from his Old Testament the 
truths of the new birth and redemption 
through faith in the Crucified. ^^^ In order 
to understand fully any one of these lines 
of thought that go through the whole 
Bible, we need to study its beginnings in 
the Old Testament, as well as its later 
developments in the New. So clearl}^ 
does the Old Testament state the leading 
spiritual truths which are more fully re- 
vealed in the New, that certain Psalms 
are called by Luther ''Pauline,'' because 
of their clear statements of justification 
by faith; and Isaiah was called by the 
church fathers ''the Evangelical prophet,'' 
because, with a fullness like that of Luke 
or John, he described the life and death 
of Christ as our Saviour. 

The spiritual life of the Church, from 
the days of Christ to the present, affords 
abundant evidence that a study of God and 



God's Tenderness and Man s Immortality. 105 

Christ, and the Spirit, and sin, and salva- 
tion, in the Old Testament, is *^ profitable 
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness.'' This expres- 
sion, as I have intimated, might be ren- 
dered more strongly : *^ Every Scripture is 
God-inspired, and therefore profitable for 
conviction, for conversion, for Christian 
culture ; '' and if we take this key which 
God has sent to us through Paul, as we 
enter the chambers of the Old Testament, 
and over every passage ask, as if we turned 
a key, '' How is this profitable for me or 
for others for conviction of sin?'' *^How 
is this profitable for me or for others for 
conversion or for Christian culture ? " we 
shall find unexpected treasures and hidden 
glories in the most unpromising chapters. 

That is the meaning, in part, of Christ's 
words, ^' I have many things to say unto 
you, but ye cannot bear them now." As 
we are able to bear it the Bible says more 
and more to us from its depths of meaning. 
That explains all true ^'progress in theol- 



Io6 Must the Old Testament Go ? 

ogy." There is more light yet to break 
forth from God's Word. In the language 
of Daniel Webster, himself so familiar with 
the Bible that he was called '' the walking 
concordance of the United States Senate," 
"There is more of valuable truth yet 

TO BE GLEANED FROM THE SaCRED WRIT- 
INGS THAT HAS THUS FAR ESCAPED THE 
ATTENTION OF COMMENTATORS, THAN FROM 
ALL OTHER SOURCES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 
COMBINED." 

" We-'search the world for truth ; we cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful 
From graven stone and written scroll. 
From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
And, weary seekers of the best, 
We come back laden from our-quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the Book our mothers read."?^^^ 



APPENDIX OF NOTES. 



APPENDIX OF NOTES. 



1. Rev. Mr. Spencer, Unitarian. — 2. Augustus Blauvelt, 
expelled from the Reformed Church for errors of doctrine. 
— 3. The Christian U7iio7t. — 4. Prof. Hermann Strack, of 
Berlin. 5. Prof. W. Robertson Smith. [Rev. R. Heber 
Newton quotes Mr. Moody also as saying : " I know that 
the Bible is inspired, because it * inspires ' me." But Mr. 
Moody would be far from making that the final test of the 
inspiration of the various parts of the Bible, and ignoring 
the objective authority of the word.] — 6. See also i Cor. 
10 : II, where the Old Testament Histories are declared to 
be God's teaching by examples, the deeds as well as the 
records being the handwriting of God. — 7. Edward Reuss, 
one of the most influential of the Biblical critics, says that 
in 1834 he discovered by ** intuition " that the elaborate laws 
in the middle books of the Pentateuch mtcst have been 
made at a later age than the simpler ones of Deuteronomy, 
according to the principles of evolution. — 8. Most of the 
destructive critics of the Old Testament have begun their 
investigations with a strong prejudice against the supernat- 
ural and in favor of evolution. To the latter fact Professor 
Curtis testifies. Hermann Strack calls attention to the 
former as especially strong in Wellhausen. — 9. R. Heber 
Newton, in his " Wrong Uses of the Bible." — 10. Jas. 2 : 
21. — 11, Mat. 12140-42. — 12. Hermann Strack also 



no Appendix of Notes, 



asserts without proof that " The object of the book is not 
to give actual history." The farsight and insight of these 
critics into the " object'* of the writer of the book of Jonah, 
and of Christ in quoting it, are especially remarkable, be- 
cause these men believe in science, but not in seers. — 13. 
Delitzsch. — 14. W. H. H. Murray, whose statements on 
this point were strongly endorsed by Professor Swing. — 
15. Richter. — 16. Rev. 3 : 20. — 17. Luke 17 : 3; 14 : 8; 
Mat. 24 : 15, etc. 

WHAT CHRIST SAID OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE NEW. 
\.Fro7n ''''New Testament Helps,^^ by Rev. IV. F. Crafts.^ 

I. Quoted from nearly all its books, (See references below.) 

II. His references to Old Testament kist07y : Eden, Mat. 
19 : 4 ; Abel, Mat. 23 : 35 ; Noah, Mat. 24 : 37 ; Lu. 17 : 27 ; 
Abraham, John 8 : 56 ; Lot, Sodom, etc., Lu. 17 : 29-32; 
Moses, burning bush, etc., Mark 12 : 26; the manna, John 
6 : 31 ; brazen serpent, John 3 : 14; David, Mat. 12 : 3, 4, 5; 
Queen of Sheba, Mat. 12 : 42; Elijah, Lu. 4 : 25, 26; Eli- 
sha, Naaman, etc., Lu. 4 : 27 ; Jonah, Mat. 12 : 40-42. 

in. His references to Old Testament laws : The decalogue, 
Mat. 4:10; 15:4; 19:18,19; 22 : 37-39; Mark 12 : 29, 
30; Lu. 10 : 25-28. Other references to O. T. laws, Mat. 
5 : 17-19; 21 : 16. Comments on O. T. laws, Mat. 5 : 21- 
27. Outgrown laws, Mat. 5 : 31-38. Separating O. T. laws 
from Jewish traditions. Mat. 5 : 43. 

IV. His references to Old Testa?nent prophecies of the MeS' 
siah. In general : Mat. 22 : 44 ; John 5 : 39-46 ; Lu. 24 : 
27-44. The forerunner, Mat. 11 : 10, 13, 14. Inauguration 
of ministry, Lu. 4 : 17. Miracles, Mat. 11:5. Rejection, 
Mat. 13 : 14 ; 21 : 42 ; John 15 : 25. Betrayal, John 13 : 18; 
17 : 12. Crucifixion, John 19 : 28. 

V. His references to other O. T prophecies : Destruction 
of Jerusalem, Mat. 24 : 15-31. 



Appendix of Notes. 1 1 1 



VI. His refer e7ices to some of the imprecatory Psalms : John 
13 : 18; 17 : 12. 

VII. O. T. warnings repeated : Mark 9 : 44; Mat. 7 : 23 ; 
15:7-9. 

VIII. His 7'eference to immortality as implied i7t O. T. lan- 
guage : Mat. 22 : 31, 32. (See also Heb. 11 : 10-16.) 

[This table includes the most prominent references of 
Christ to Old Testament passages. The entire list may be 
studied by reading all the texts marked " C " in the list of 
" References in the New Testament to passages in the Old 
Testament," in "New Testament Helps."] 

18. Isa. 57 : 15 ; 62 : 2 ; Psa. 21 : 17. — 19. Psa. 145 : 19; 
Isa. 65 : 13. — 20. Psa. 41 : i, 2, 4; 34 : 14. — 21. -Exod. 23 : 
4, 5; Prov. 20 : 22 ; 25 : 21. — 22. Exod. 23 : 4, 5; Prov. 20 : 
22; 25 : 21. — 23. Rabbi Hillel also learned it there. He 
said, as quoted in the Jewish Catechism : " What you do 
not wish done to you, do not to others ; upon this rests the 
whole Thor^h:'— Tahmid 20 Sabbath, K 31.— 24. Mat. 5 : 
22, 28.-25. Mat. 6 : 18; Isa. 58 : 5.-26. Mat. 6 : 26; Job 
38 : 41 ; Psa. 147 : 9 ; Deu. 25 : 4. — 27. Psa. 80 : 8-19 ; Isa. 
5 : 1-7.— 28. John 10.— 29. Gen. 49 : 24.— 30. Psa. 23.— 
31. Isa. 40 : II. — 32. Isa. 62 : 5, etc. — 33. Isa. 54 : 5. — 

34. Psa. 45. 

35. Aspects of Truth common to both Testaments 
— introduced in the Old, and more fully 

DESCRIBED IN THE NeW. 

[From ^^ New Testatnent Helps ^'' by W. F. Crafts.^ 

[Only partial lists of passages — enough to show that 
each line of thought referred to is found — with more or 
less of emphasis, in every part of the Bible. Spaces left 
for additional passages to be noted.] 

God as " Father." Deu. i : 31 ; 32 : 11 ; 2 Chr, 29 : 10; 
Is. 63 : 16; Mat. 6 : 9; 2 Thes. 2 : 16. 



1 12 Appendix of Notes, 



God as "King." Gen. 14 : i8; i Sa. 12 : 12; Ps. 2 : 6, 
10, 16 ; Is. 6 : 5 ; 43 : 1 5 ; Dan. 4 : 17, 37 ; Zee. 14:9; Mat. 
13 ; Lu. 19 : 38 ; John 18 : 37 ; Rom. 14 : 17 ; Rev. 11 : 15; 
12 : 10; 15:3; 17 : 14. 

God as " Shepherd." Gen. 49 : 24 ; Ezr. 34 : 23 ; Ps. 
23 : I ; 80 : I ; Is. 40 : 1 1 ; Ezek. 36 : 38 ; Zee. 13:7; John 

10 : 14; 21 : 15; Heb. 13 : 20; i Pe. 2 : 25 ; 5:4. 

God as "Bridegroom." 2 Cor. 11:3; Is. 62 : 5; Mat. 
9 : 15; John 3 : 29; Rev. 21 : 2, 9; 22 : 17. 

God as "Judge." Gen. 18 : 25; Deu. 32 : 36; Judg. 

11 : 27; I Sa. 2 : 10; Job 9 : 15; Ps. 7 : ii ; 68 : 5; John 
5 : 30 ; Ac. ID : 42 ; 2X1.4: 8. 

God as "Light." Ex. id .-23; 14 : 20; 2 Sa. 23 : 4; 
Ps. 27 : I ; Is. 9:2; Zee. 14:7; Hos. 6:5; Hab. 3:4; 
Lu. 2 : 32; John i : 4; 9 : 5; Ac. 22 : 6; Rom. 2 : 19; i Jo. 
I :5; Rev. 21 123; 22: 5. 

God as Vine "Life." Gen. 49 : 11 ; Ps. 80 : 9-19; Is. 
5:1-7; Lu. 13 : 6; John 15 : i, etc.; Ep. 5 : 22, 23; Rev. 
2:7. 

God AS Bleeding "Lamb." Gen. 4:4; Rev. 13:8; 
Ex. 12 : 3, etc.; Lev. 14 : 12; Num. 28 : 3; Deu. 16 : 2; 
Josh. 5:10; Judg. 2:5; I Sa. 7:9; Ps. 51:16; Pro. 
21 : 23 ; Is. I : II ; 53 : 7 ; Jer. 6 : 20 [John 3 : 10]. " Paul- 
ine Psalms," 32, 51, etc. "Evangelical Prophet," Isaiah, 
John I : 29; Ac. 6 : 32 ; Rev. 5 : 12, 13 [27 references to 
the " Lamb " in Rev.]. 

God as the " Lord of Nature." Gen. 1:1; Ps. 
19 : I ; 104 ; Job 38 : 4-7 ; Is. 40 : 12-31 ; Jer. 10 : 10-16; 
Mark 4 : 39-41 ; John i : 1-5; Col. i : 16, 17 ; Heb. i : 10- 
12; Rev. 4:11. 

God's Spirit as " Water of Life." i Cor. 10:4; Ps. 
1:3; Is. 55 : I ; Ezek. 47 J 9; Jol^n 7 *• 37 ; Rev. 22 : i ; 
6:17. 



Appendix of Notes. 113 



God as " Holy Spirit.*' Gen. 1:2; (Ps. 104 : 30) ; 
Ex. 35 : 31; >dg. 3 : 10; 2 Sa. 23 : 2 ; (2 Pe. i : 21); Ps. 51 : 
2; 139 : 7; Is. 61 : i; Eze. 3 : 12; Mark i : 10; Lu. 4 : 14; 
John 3 : 34; 20 : 22 ; Eph. 2 : 18. 

God as " Son of Man." Gen. 3:15; 32 : 24, 30 ; 9 : 27 ; 
12 13; 49- 10; Ps. 89: 36; Is. II : i; 7 : 14; Dan. 7 : 13; 
Mat. 16 : 28; Rom. i : 4. 

36. Augustus Blauvelt— 37. R. Heber Newton.— 38. 
Mat. 19 14; 23 : 35; 24 : 37; Lu. 17 : 26-32; Mar. 12 : 26; 
John 6:3; 3 : 14; Mat. 12 : 3, 4, 5, 42; Lu. 4 : 25, 26, 27; 
Matt. 12 : 40-42. — 39. A full list of quotations in the New 
Testament from the Old is given in "New Testament Helps," 
by the author of this volume.— 40. Prof. W. G. T. Shedd. 

— 41. Howard Crosby, D. D. — 42. In 1597 Galileo made 
the oft-quoted remark about the Bible not teaching how the 
heavens go, and in 1685 Clericus took the next step of skep- 
ticism, and said that Jesus did not come to teach Criticism. 

— 43. I Kings 2 : 3 ; 2 Kings 23 : 35 ; 2 Chron. 23 : 18 ; Ezra 
3:2; Dan. 9:11,13; Luke 24 : 44 ; John 7 : 23 ; i Cor. 9 : 
9. — 44. John 5 : 46, 47. — 45. John i : 45; Acts 3 : 22-24; 
7 : 37 ; 26 : 22 ; Rom. 10 : 5, 19. — 46. " The book of Moses " 
is a common expression in both Testaments. 2 Chron. 25 : 
4; 35 : 12; Ezra 6 : 18; Neh. 13 : i ; Mark 12 : 26. Christ 
called the Pentateuch simply " Moses," in Luke 16 : 29, 31 ; 
24 : 27. In Heb. 4 : 7, the word " David " is similarly used 
of the Psalms, some of which, it is generally conceded, have 
been added since David edited the original Psalter, as " Wes- 
ley's Hymns," used by Wesleyans, contain hymns other and 
later than his, so that the argument for the Mosaic author- 
ship of the entire Pentateuch from the fact that it was called 
'* Moses," would not alone be conclusive. So with the name 
"Book of Moses." " Book of Judges " does not imply that 
any one ever believed that the Judges wrote it. It will be 



1 14 Appendix of Notes. 



noticed also that we do not use in our argument (because 
the testimony is partial, indirect, and unnecessary) the in- 
stances where Christ referred to separate laws or chap- 
ters as given or written by Moses, such as the decalogue 
(Mark 7 : 10), the law of the leper (Mark i : 44, etc.), the 
law of divorce (Mat. 19 : 7), although it is very signijicatit 
that in one case at least he quoted as written by Moses a pas- 
sage " concerfiing the bushy'' which is not specifically declared in 
the Pentateuch to have been written by him. — (Lu. 20 : 37 ; cf. 
Exod. 3.) Against the use of these references to single 
Mosaic laws or codes as proving Mosaic authorship of the 
Pentateuch, it is urged with some force that it does not prove 
that Christ wrote the four gospels, that Paul quotes single 
passages from them as being the laws of Christ, (i Cor. 9 : 
14; II : 23, 24.) There is no parallel in Paul, however, for 
John 5 : 46, or John 7 : 19. He never said, "Did not Jesus 
give you the four gospels ? " nor called them " His writings." 

The indirect evidence of the quotations which Christ 
makes from chapters here and there in the Pentateuch, is 
thus given by Rev. Howard Crosby, D. d. : — 

" I. Our Lord quoted the Pentateuch as of Moses. 

*' 2. The Pentateuch, in our Lord's day, was one book, 
and universally regarded as of one author, /. e. Moses. 

" The latter proposition clinches the former. It prevents 
our saying that only those words actually quoted by our 
Lord are of Moses ; or at most only the immediate context. 

"If I quoted a page of Bancroft's History, and, in quoting 
it, said: 'Bancroft says thus and thus,' I should be under- 
stood as believing that Bancroft's whole work was Ban- 
croft's. No righteous critic could say that I meant to aiiirm 
Bancroft's authorship only of that page or chapter quoted, 
unless Bancroffs work was already split up into sections^ and 
attributed to various authors. It is so with the Pentateuch. 



Appendix of Notes. 1 1 5 



The Pentateuch, in our Lord's day, was not split up into 
sections and attributed to various authors. All scholars 
agree that it was considered as one work by one author, 
Moses. . . . Now, we are to keep in mind that the 
Jews in our Lord's time had none of the divisions of the 
Pentateuch which scientific study has produced in our time. 
They had no Deuteronomist and priest-code, no Elohist and 
Jehovist, and second Elohist and Redactor, no five Narra- 
tors. All this is new. To the Jews of our Lord's day ' the 
law' was a book, one book, and that the Pentateuch, just <ls 
we have it. In this light it is surely impossible to deny that 
Jesus understood the Pentateuch to be the work of Moses." 
47. Prof. C. A. Briggs and Hermann Strack. — 43. New 
York Observer. — 49. See report in The Christian World, 
London. — 50. Colenso and others say that even if Christ 
knew that the Pentateuch was not the work of Moses, He 
might innocently have " spoken of it as such in accordance 
with the prevalent ideas of his time," which is only a sugar- 
coating of the blasphemy, that the divine Christ might, in- 
stead of correcting an error, distinctly and repeatedly con- 
firm it. — 51. We are reminded that Christ, when His deity 
was veiled in flesh, declared there was one subject on which 
He could not speak, because he did not know about it. 
(Mat. 24 : 36.) From that it is argued that He might not 
have known some things which He did sdij — an inference 
much too strong for the text. To say that Christ, when in- 
carnate, did not know some of the things of which He did 
not speak, is vastly less than the claim of the new criticism 
that He did not know some of the things which He pro- 
fessed to know, and of which He often spoke. We are told 
by Robertson Smith, that He no more anticipated the dis- 
coveries of Colenso than those of Galileo. It seems to be 
forgotten that He did not talk about astronomy, did not 



1 1 6 Appe7idix of Notes. 



endorse Ptolemy's mistakes, but He did often talk of "the 
law," for it was a part of the text-book which he came ,from 
Heaven to expound and *' fulfill." That would be the last 
place for Him to be mistaken. He certainly claimed to be 
accurate in all that He did say in many passages, — among 
others John 12 : 48-50: " He that rejecteth me, and receiv- 
eth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him ; the word 
that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For 
I spake not from myself ; but the Father which sent me. He 
hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what 
I should speak. And I know that his commandment is 
life eternal ; the things therefore which I speak, even as the 
Father hath said unto me, so I speak." — 52. See Ezra 3 : 
2; 6 : 18; 7:6; Neh. i : 7, 8; 8 ; i, 14; 9 : 14; 10: 29; 13 : 
I. See Concordance for 540 references to Moses in the Pen- 
tateuch, and yet others in all parts of both Old and New 
Testament— 53. Howard Crosby, D. D.— 54. Prof. W. G. 
T. Shedd. — 55. The Observer. — ^Q. H. Sinclair Patterson, 
M. D. — 57. The Christian World, of London. — 58. Gen. 3; 
7 : 16; 24 : 3; 28 : 21 ; 2 Chron. 18 : 31 ; Psa. 56 : 10. 

59. Prof. Francis L. Patton says, " If it were held that 
the words of Christ and the New Testament writers are suf- 
ficiently accounted for, by supposing that a fourfold docu- 
ment was composed under the direction of Moses, parts of 
it being written by Moses himself, or that Mosaic writings 
were the basis of our present Pentateuch, we should be 
obliged to admit that though this view may fall very far 
short of the truth, it nevertheless c-Annot be held to be in- 
consistent with the Confession of Paith." This is doubtless 
the meaning of Luther's words, which the critics misquote 
as an endorsement of their efforts to prove that the Penta- 
teuch was not even edited by Moses. " What matters it," 
he said, "if Moses should not himself have written the Pen- 



Appendix of Notes, 1 1 7 



tateuch?" — 60. Law of Circumcision long neglected, Josh. 
5:5; Passover, 2 Kings 23 : 21, etc.; Feast of Tabernacles, 
Neh. 8 : 17; Sabbaths, 2 Chron. 36 : 21 ; whole "Book of 
the Law " restored to notice after long neglect, 2 Kings 22 • 3, 
etc. No record in all Old Testament of the Day of Atone- 
ment being observed. — 61. Deu. 17 : 17. — 62. Of these 
540 references to Moses in the Pentateuch, 60 are found 
in Deuteronomy, 180 in Numbers, 60 in Leviticus, and 
240 in Exodus. — 63. Mat. 15:4; 19:18,19; 22:37,38, 
39; Mark 12 : 29, 30; Luke 10 : 25-28. — 64. Luke 4:4, 12 ; 
(Deu. 8:3; 6:16.) — 65. Mat. 5 : 17, 19.— 66. Mat. 5: 
43; Mark 'j \^,'^\ Mat. 15 : 4-9. — 67. Mat. 21 : 16; 12 : i- 
8.-68. Mat. 9:13.-69. Mat. 5:31,38.-70. Christian 
Union.— 11. Deu. 6 : 5.-72. Professor Swing.— 73. Lev. 
19 : 18. — 74. Lev. 19 : 34, etc. ; i Kings 8 : 10-12 ; 2 Chron. 
7 • i-3> 37-40; Mai. I : II. "In the Book of Proverbs," says 
Delitzsch, " the name of Israel nowhere occurs, but that of 
man is found all the more frequently." So Job is not Jew- 
ish, nor Genesis, nor Jonah, nor Daniel. These are interna- 
tional, uninational, world-reaching. — 75. R. Heber Newton. 
— 76. Mai. 3:1; Mat. 11 : 10, 13, 14. — 77. Lu. 4 : 21 ; Isa. 
61 : I.— 78. Mat. 11:5; Isa. 35 : 5; 29 : 18.— 79. Mat. 
13 : 14; 21 :42; John 15 : 25. — 80. John 13 : 18; 17 : 12. — 
81. John 19 : 29. — 82. Luke 24 : 27. — 83. Gen. 1:1; Psa. 
104 : 30. — 84. Judg. 3 : 10. — 85. Exod. 35 : 31. — 86. 2 Pet. 
I : 21 ; 2 Sam. 23 : 2. — 87. Psa. 51 : 11. — 83. Professor 
Swing. — 89. Mat. 25 : 15-31. — SO. John 13 : i3; 17 : 12 ; 
(Psa. 109 : 8, 17). — 91. 2 Sam. i : 19-27; 3 : 33. — 92. See 
Mark 9 : 44, (Isa. 66 : 24) ; Mat. 7 : 23, (Psa. 6:8); Mat. 15 : 
7-9. — 93. The Christian Union. — 94. Augustus Blauvelt. 

95. God's Final Reckoning with His Servants, as 
described by Christ and recorded by Matthew, the converted 
collector. Mat. 9:9. 



Ii8 Appendix of Azotes. 



1. Duties are given by God to all "according to their sev- 
eral ability." 25 : 14, 15 (" talents "). 

2. These duties include more than morality. 19 : 18-21 
(young ruler's "lack") ; 7 : 12 (Golden Rule). 

3. Every one will be called to give account of his stew- 
ardship, and to receive reward or punishment. 25 : 19 
("talents ") ; 20 : 8 (vineyard "penny") ; 12 : 36 ("every idle 
word ") ; 16 : 27 (" Son of man "). 

4. This account may be called for at any moment. 24 : 36- 
39 ("As days of Noah") ; 24 : 42, 44, 46 ("watch") ; 24 : 48- 
51 (" delayeth ") ; 25 : 10-13 ("virgins"). 

5. The faithful will be commended and rewarded. 7 : 21 
("Lord" — "but doeth"); 10:32 ("confess"); 25:20, 21 
(" 5 talents ") ; 20 : 9, 10 (" every man a penny ") ; 25 : 34, 35 
(" Come, ye blessed "). 

6. The unfaithful will be condemned and punished. 10 : 
33 ("deny"); 15 : 13 ("plant"). [^] In spite of foolish ex- 
cuses. 25 : 25 (i talent buried). \b'\ No reasonable excuse 
to offer. 22 : 1 1-13 ("speechless "). [<:] Separated from the 
good. 13 : 30 (tares and wheat) ; 13 : 47-50 (bad fish) ; 25 : 
31-33 (sheep and goats). \d\ Punished terribly after death. 
25 : 24-30 ("one talent ") ; 25 : 41-46 (" Depart "). 

7. Not only the vicious classes, but also those guilty of 
heart-sins will be punished. 18 : 23-35 [forgiven " 10,000 " 
("100")]. 

8. The punishment of sin not personal, but natural. 7 : 
27 (house flooded) ; 7 : 17 (tree and fruit). 

9. Christ, like Jonathan, shoots arrows of loving warn- 
ing by his words about our peril. 3 : 10, 8 (" axe " — " tree ") 
4 : 17 ("repent"); 5 : 20 ("exceed scribes"); 7 : 13 ("strait 
gate"); 10:28 ("kill body ") ; 12:41 ("Nineveh"); 18: 
8 ("hand offend"); 26 : 24 ("betrayed"); 23 : 37-39 ("Je- 
rusalem "). 



Appendix of Notes. 119 



66. John 8 : 45; Mark 9 : 42-48; Mat. 23 : 13, etc.— 97. 
Deu. I : 31 ; Psa. 103 : 13 ; 84 : 26 ; Isa. 66 : 13 ; 49 : 1 5 ; 
27 : 10 ; Hos. 14 : 3 ; Deu. 23 : 5 ; 2 Sam. 7 : 14. — 98. Deu. 
7 : 7, 8 ; 10 ; 14, 15 ; Isa. 43 : 4 ; Jer. 33 : i. — 99. Psa. 89 : 
14; John 3:16,36; Rev. 7:14; 6:16; Rom. 15:30; 
Heb. 3 : 7, 11.-— ICO. Mat. 11.— 101. Mat. 12.— 102. Deu. 
I.— 103. Deu. 4.— 104. Exod. 34 : 6, 7.— 105. Mat. 22 : 
31, 32 ; Exod. 3 : 6. — lOS. John 5 : 39. — 107. The Congre- 
gationalist—IQQ. Psa. 17 : 5 ; Prov. 14 : 32.— 109. W. C. 
Gra5% D. D. — 110. " Doctrines of Faith and Morals for Jew- 
ish Schools and Families, by Dr. S. Herxheimer, translated 
from the German by Dr. C. Kleeberg." 

111. Psa. 136 : I.— 112. Prov. 23 : 18.— 113. Psa. 16 : 
II ; 31 : 19; Eccl. 7 : 15 ; 3 : 17 ; 12 : 7; Prov. 14 : 22 ; Gen. 
15 : 15 ; 2 Sam. 12 : 23 ; Isa. 26 : 19. — 114. See Note 35.— 
115. John 3 : 10.— 116. Psa. 6 ; 32; 51 ; 103; 130; 143.— 
117.— Whittier. 



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